Fast-growing, Istanbul-based Hedef, wholly owned by Southeast Europe Equity Fund II, United States based private equity fund, is one of the top three leasing companies in Turkey and has around 1 500 fleet customers.

The company provides full service leasing to corporate customers and is expanding its fleet and customer base. To manage this growing complexity and to meet its ambitious expansion plans Hedef required a new and powerful leasing and fleet management system.

The process began in late 2009 and, after an initial search for a new system nationally, it expanded the search to Europe and drew up a shortlist of six companies.

The shortlisted suppliers were then reduced to two through an RFP (Request for Proposal) process. Sofico, whose systems manage around 700 000 vehicles globally, was appointed as the successful applicant.

'Miles was a clear winner,' said Hedef managing director, Onder Erdem (Inset). 'We wanted a robust and flexible IT system which could be scaled as our business grows and was capable of handling a large number of client contracts with complete integrity.

'Miles offers a logic that is simple to understand and easy to follow. At the same time, it’s very flexible and allows us to alter and modify it to meet our changing needs. It also has a multi-lingual capability. Translating it from English to Turkish was very straightforward.

'I believe that with Miles, we selected the best system in the European software market. During the selection process, I also spoke with some of Sofico’s existing customers, and their feedback was very positive,' Erdem explained. Hedef is certainly in good company, as current Miles users include some of the best known-names in global leasing. 

A major benefit for Hedef was the speed with which its technical staff was able to implement the Miles system. Thanks to the Miles refined implementation methodology, this was achieved in just 11 months, some 6-12 months faster than a standard system implementation.

Furthermore, Miles is delivered with a pre-configured Reference Implementation setup which reflects common processes and best practices within the leasing industry. This speeds up the implementation process dramatically. 

The implementation setup is also highly configurable which allows it to be tweaked to exactly meet the fleet customer’s requirements during the implementation process and to provide optimal support of individual customers' processes.

Erdem said that his company had seen multiple benefits from implementing the Miles system, but from his perspective there were five clear advantages that would become increasingly apparent going forward.

'First, Miles is a system capable of handling all of our clients’ contract details, while not allowing any faulty transactions due to its in-built controls and the robust nature of its databases.

'Second, it can readily handle a huge amount of data, which is ideal for a rapidly expanding company such as ours. 

'Third, it has a wealth of reporting functions which are easy to configure and analyse, and can provide all the information we require for the management of our fleet.

'Fourth, the system offers great flexibility with fast implementation, and allows alterations and modifications when needed. 

'Finally, the knowledge that the system is used globally by some of the world’s leading leasing companies, which have contributed their expertise to its ongoing development, is very reassuring. This is backed up by Sofico’s own expertise and experience in the European leasing and fleet market over the last 24 years.

'We have no doubt that we have selected the best system to meet our needs and those of our customers,' he added.

'Thanks to Miles’ Reference Implementation methodology, we were able to implement Miles much faster than a standard implementation, which can be a major benefit for leasing companies looking to gain commercial advantage in today’s challenging market conditions, he concluded.

Jan Bouckaert, head of Business Development at Sofico, said:'We are delighted to welcome Hedef Fleet Services to the Sofico customer base and are confident that Miles will provide the necessary flexibility and scalability to allow Hedef to grow its business in line with its plans.'