Best SME Company Car Programme: BMW Business Partnership
BMW continues its reign with the best SME Company Car Programme award at the 2016 Business Car Manager SME Company Car of the Year Awards.
Winner for the last two-years, we still believe BMW’s Business Partnership programme provides the best support for the SME sector.
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However, it came up against some tough competition from the likes of Renault – but it was BMW’s continued commitment to the SME sector through refinements of its objectives that have kept it at the top.
Rather than sitting on its laurels after its previous two wins, work on the Business Partnership Programme began at the beginning of 2015, to further focus retailers on the SME small fleet sector.
This included 500 SME and Business demonstrators being added to support the retail network’s existing vehicles.
On top of this, dedicated production vehicles was also introduced to improve lead times, consistency and enhance the requirements of SME customers.
Back at HQ, six new corporate development managers were recruited within BMW and MINI to provide guidance and ensure the new Business Partner objectives were being managed successfully.
In addition, six corporate sales managers were also appointed to look at coaching and increased customer focus within their corporate network.
BMW Business Partnership
- A business support programme targeted at small businesses and small fleets – an outsourced fleet management product
- Offered through BMW and MINI retailers Business Partnership is part of the broader programme for SME ‘BMW Group Business Sales’
- Dedicated local business development manager
- Special contract hire rates for small businesses
- BMW and MINI pre-contract cars available
Finally, to increase retailer leads, BMW appointed Jaywing, the digital marketing services specialist, to prospect cold data and book appointments for local business development managers.
This isn’t the end of the refinements to the BMW Business Partnership programme. In 2016, BMW and MINI UK will be running a local business development manager recruitment facility centrally, to offer a high calibre talent pool for the retailer network.
It is this level of detail, led from specialised local business development managers, that has kept the BMW Business Partnership programme at the forefront of serving the needs of SME company car buyers.
The SME Company Car of the Year Awards 2016 is sponsored by Fleet Alliance.
Best SME Company Car Programme. What were the judges looking for?
- Small businesses and SME small fleets don’t have full-time fleet managers. It’s usually part of the MD’s remit or falls to one of the other directors. So SMEs need help to run their company cars.
- Which company car programme does that best?
- Which really delivers to SMEs in terms of consultancy, test drives, finance packages and external ‘fleet manager’ expertise that SMEs require?