November 2008, Fleet Financials - Cover Story
Fleet Helps Safelite Foster Profitable Growth and Satisfaction
By Cheryl Knight
Fleet Team Works Seamlessly with Executive Management
The fleet team views its relationship with senior management critical to ultimate success.
"Our fleet team has an open and comfortable relationship with our senior managers," Gilchrist said.
The team's communications are informative and pointed, and members optimize time with senior management to keep them informed and achieve buy-in and support for the team's goals.
Fleet also works closely with the finance and accounting teams to manage and prepare their annual budget.
"This partnership is a good combination of their expertise and our industry experience to tackle both our strategic and tactical workload," Gilchrist said.
Another key partnership for fleet is with the risk department. Gilchrist serves on the risk department's Safety Council, and the director of risk to whom Gilchrist reports, serves on the Fleet Council.
"This combines critical fleet and safety initiatives, driven by the members of these councils, our customers, who are the users," she said. "Users are defined as field managers at all levels, from fulfillment operations, sales, distribution, and security."
Other key internal fleet partnerships include all levels of field management and human resources.
Externally, fleet's relationships with vendors for leasing, maintenance, fuel, and vehicle upfitting are all critical to the company's growth and success.
"We are very proud of and excited about the relationships we have with these companies and continue to work on key initiatives with each of them to achieve our goals," Gilchrist said.
Feeney wholeheartedly agrees and believes senior management should advocate for fleet initiatives, especially to drive process compliance.
"Processes create consistency, consistency drives compliance, and compliance drives a culture of success," Feeney said. "Senior managers have the respect and attention of the field managers and drivers they manage; therefore, they should consistently push for a culture of safety and process compliance. We all have a stake in this, and endorsements from senior management to achieve the goals of the risk and fleet teams go a long way."