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Briggs relishes challenge of ever-changing market
17 July 2008
Maintaining CFC Solutions' position as market leader keeps Neville on his toes.
Neville Briggs still recalls the time former British rally champion Roger Clark walked across the car showroom and asked him how his first day at work had been.
Back then, Neville was a 'young lad' of 23 and had just joined the sales team at Roger Clark Cars in Leicester.
He admits to being star struck by the encounter.
"I couldn't believe it," Neville says. "I'd always been into rallying and I thought it was fantastic that he took the trouble to come over and speak to me."
Thirty years later, Neville is now at the helm of two businesses, but still retains the passion for the motor industry that he had when he started out
He became managing director of fleet software company CFC Solutions in May this year, in addition to holding the managing director position of sister company Pinewood Computer Solutions. It's Neville's 10th year at Pinewood - the longest he has stayed at a company, although he worked at Grosvenor Contracts Leasing for eight years. He says it's the constant change which has kept him at the company.
"Every day there's a new challenge so I don't get bored," he explains.
"In other jobs, you might get bored after two years and want to move on but at CFC and Pinewood the market changes so rapidly - it's a constant challenge."
CFC Solutions started life as a leasing company in 1951, developing its own in-house fleet management software, which it then took to the wider market in the late 1970s. Today, it has around 3,000 clients worldwide and is part of the Pendragon empire.
"It's certainly a big selling point to CFC customers to say that we're part of Pendragon - it's a massive company," says Neville.
CFC and Pinewood share the same brand values of innovation, commitment, simplicity and passion. And it's commitment to customer service which comes across as particularly important to Neville. He talks about getting to know CFC's customers and says there is a much wider spread of clients compared to Pinewood.
Meeting challenges
"From my point of view of going out and meeting businesses, it's great to have a lot more variance in the type of customers you're going to be talking to," he says.
He also points out that CFC has longstanding customers - some of more than 25 years' standing. An account management team keeps in regular contact with customers, seeing how the software is being used in a particular business and sharing best practice between different companies.
Neville's aim at CFC is to maintain the company's position as marketleader and to meet the challenges of a rapidly changing fleet market He says one of his biggest challenges to date has been adopting a pay-as-you-go approach at Pinewood, known as Software-as-a-service (SaaS).
Core customers
CFC's core customers are fleets of around 500 vehicles, which use CFC's Fleet Plus software. Fleet Plus helps with the day-to-day aspects of running a fleet and includes an asset management feature to analyse budgets; accident management to track the progress from the initial incident through to the financial claim and fuel management - among other features.
A Fleet Plus customer was able to spot fuel fraud recently thanks to the software.
Neville says it's much easier for a driver to fill up their own car and then fill up the car behind them and pay for it on the same transaction if a fleet manager doesn't monitor fuel or have a fuel card system in place. But it's not just about data gathering, according to Neville.
"It's about being able to get the data out of the system in an easy way so you can make sensible decisions. "You don't want to know about the cars and drivers that are meeting your fleet policy, it's the exceptions that are important. The software will highlight the drivers that keep having accidents or the vehicles
that are using more fuel."
As well as bringing information to a fleet manager's attention, the advantage of the software is saving time. And Neville says the software pays for itself by the cost savings and efficiencies it drives. He also suggests that the system is intuitive and easy to use. A customer usually requires only a few days' training and a few days'
implementation.
Carbon dioxide emissions reporting is one feature ofthe Fleet Plus software which is proving a useful tool for fleet managers.It calculates the carbon footprint of vehicles managed within the system, based on the mileage/life of the vehicles and C02 details from the manufacturer.
Neville explains that CFC cut the carbon footprint of its fleet by 27% last year, and used the C02 report generator to measure the reduction. The reduction was achieved
through having more online video conferencing instead of face-to-face meetings, increased car sharing and better journey planning.
CFC's other fleet management products are Fleet Horizon for mixed fleets, Fleet Outlook for small fleets and Contract Manager for outsourced fleet management.
In addition, CFC can provide bespoke applications. For instance, BP required a pan-European fuel management solution, including local translation and legislation.
There are currently two risk management products - Safety Net (an online corporate road risk assessment tool providing a risk 'score') and Licence Link (a licence checking facility linked to the DVLA). All software is developed in-house by a team of 45 employees and Neville says there are other products in the pipeline
too. So, how long does it take to develop a new product?
"A simple fleet management product could be out in the market within four to five months," Neville replies. "A more complicated one might take twice as long, but it's a matter of months rather than years."
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