CASE STUDY: Akzo Nobel

Akzo Nobel is a Dutch-based multinational that creates decorative paints and performance coatings for industrial and retail customers worldwide, owning brands such as Dulux, Cuprinol, Sadolin and Polyfilla.

Arval and its global partner, Element, provide fleet services to the company in 27 countries, managing almost 5,000 vehicles in total. In the UK, Akzo Nobel operates 470 cars, mostly allocated to its field sales force, and around 230 vans, used mainly for deliveries and distribution.

The Challenge

In mid-2019, Akzo Nobel UK signed a five-year sole supply fleet deal with Arval and, soon afterwards, discussions began about the company's fleet insurance and risk management needs.

Akzo Nobel UK Fleet Manager Karl Allward explained: “We found that we’d reached a point where we felt as though we weren’t getting what we wanted out of our existing provider. We simply felt that we weren’t making much progress in terms of driving down our incident rate, plus when repairs were needed, getting vehicles back on the road was often slower and more difficult than we expected. So we started talking to Arval about their Total Care product.

The Solution

David Brown, Corporate Business Manager at Arval, takes over the story:

“Arval Total Care has been created as a simple and inclusive package with an insured leased vehicle and an accident management solution for our customers, with a simple pricing structure based on a charge per vehicle.”

“The whole product is designed to remove the kind of frustrations that Akzo Nobel were experiencing. It delivers a fast and efficient claims and repairs process, controls costs to deliver highly competitive pricing, and provides key data through which areas for risk management improvements can be identified.”

Results

Karl says, “Everything regarding the insurance and repair process sits with one provider and one phone number. So if there is an incident, both we and our drivers know who to call, and the resulting process is slick and efficient.

We used to spend a lot of time in the fleet department chasing repairs, checking progress and trying to find out who was responsible for different elements. That has now disappeared.”

“The repair process is also faster and, we are saving money on daily rental and reducing other costs associated with vehicles being off the road.

We also often had issues with completed vehicles not being released by repairers, thanks to the need to pay the excess and VAT in advance. Again, because everything is now centralised with one supplier, this problem never arises.

“With the new arrangement having been in place for a few months, we are now planning to examine the claims and risk management data provided in order to identify areas where we can make improvements in our incident rate. This is something that previously just wasn’t possible.”

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