Smartphones and social media are changing how we work and that is changing how customers need to use cars for business. The trick for fleet business suppliers is to forecast what customers will need tomorrow.

Alphabet believes that developments such as Skype and cloud computing need to be incorporated into mobility needs. People are picking employers, the company reckons, not the other way round, and people will now choose the work they are good at and not just restrict selling their services to one company as an employee.

Fleet management is not about finance or managing the car any more, says Alphabet, it's about managing mobility. It won't just be demand for cars in the future but for mobility, and information technology (IT) developments will permit that.

‘Financing the car is part of the solution we offer,’ says joint CEO Norbert van den Eijnden. ‘But most of our customers could finance the car by themselves if they want to. That’s not the main reason to come to our leasing company – they could go to a bank. The main reason is because they want to have their fleet managed and they want advice on how to develop. It’s already “Old School” to talk about total cost of ownership. Now we are moving to total cost of mobility.’

AlphaCity is currently the company’s corporate car sharing scheme, combining city cars and telematics. ‘Now, car sharing is something to manage your pool cars better. We think that in 10 or 15 years, company fleets will be more flexible,’ continues van den Eijnden. ‘That means of course there will be those that have a one-to-one connection to a car. But there may be others who have – if there are 300 people, 300 cars from which they can choose for various reasons, for instance electric cars that do not have the range for the weekend or whatever. There may be other solutions in which 300 to 1,000 people share 200 or 300 cars. Because they are flexible workers as well and living in a mega-city, they do not want to have a car of their own, because of the parking or congestion problems. It won’t happen tomorrow, it will be a shift over a number of years.’

Flexibility could also include adapting schemes so that both business and private use can be included. ‘With a product like AlphaCity, we’ve found that you can change the scheme and make private use possible as well,’ continues Mr van den Eijnden. ‘This means that you can book the car for a business trip during the day and in the evening as well or at the weekends.

‘So it means that as a company, you can offer a pool of cars that can be used on a private basis as well. And we see with AlphaCity that a lot of the cars are booked at the weekend, because people like to use the car on Friday for a business trip, then return it on Monday and use it at the weekend.’

‘And this is a win-win on the financial side as well,’ says Alphabet co-CEO Ed Frederiks. ‘Also, employees can ask themselves: “When do I really need the car and when don’t I?” and use the employer’s car if it is available, or perhaps if they need add-on mobility, for example, to move house by themselves. These are things that can become possible but it has to get into the mindset.’

So how far can these schemes replace existing methods of acquisition? ‘For me that’s an easy question because I’m a banker,’ says Mr Frederiks, ‘If a banker provides credit, you have a fixed amount of money that is always needed in a company. So this is my fixed amount of cars for operational leasing that you will have anyway, because in the end, operational leasing will be cheaper than car sharing, because you need an add-on for administration and so forth. Then you have the mid-tier for three to nine months. That would be a kind of rental or mid-term leasing product and will have all the flexible stuff around it. And that will be car leasing.’