General Motors Reorganizes Fleet Operations

General Motors has consolidated its fleet and commercial operations into a single, regionally focused organization. The new organization, now known as General Motors Fleet & Commercial Operations, will have two principal organizational elements: Sales and Service, and Brand and Support. "We've got one group now that speaks for the entire market of opportunity that is defined by the current fleet and commercial business today," said Rick Lee, who is now the fleet and commercial general manager for the Sales and Service area of General Motors Fleet & Commercial Operations. "Everything that isn't retail falls under our responsibility; but where we've had the kind of division of responsibility between the marketing divisions and NAO fleet, we've brought all that together into one single organization that speaks for the whole area of opportunity outside of the retail business. That's a huge difference from where it has been." Lee, whose title was executive ex. director, NAO Fleet Operations, now oversees fleet and commercial sales, service support, remarketing, and rental. Lee reports to Darwin Clark, vice president and general manager of Vehicle Sales, Service and Parts. Under Brand and Support, David Hansen is the new Fleet & Commercial general manager. He reports to John Middlebrook, vice president of Vehicle Brand Marketing. Hansen will oversee the departments of finance and administration, field strategy development and special products, two commercial brand managers, and GM Certified Used Vehicles. Within GM's new regional structure, one individual, a fleet and commercial regional manager, will direct resources that will cover a range from non-fleet commercial customers to the large commercial fleet accounts. Lee said the fleet and commercial regional manager will be responsible for both a dealer contact organization comprised of area sales and area service managers, and a customer contact organization of fleet account sales and service executives. GM put the new organization together with an "implementation team" represented by what Lee said was "all of GM's stakeholders in the commercial and fleet business," including representatives from Pontiac-GMC, Chevrolet, NAO Fleet, and GM's Information Systems Organization. In formulating the new organization, Lee said the group followed an eight-step process, starting with "where do you want to go as an organization?"; including "what do you want to accomplish?"; and "what are the important business processes that have to be in place to support that vision?" "It's a little bit different from how GM has gone about reorganizations in the past, as it really started with defining your future vision and then identified the major conceptual elements of that vision that needed to be in place in order to make it a reality," Lee said. "What's unique about this approach is that the first four to five steps of this eight-step process never dealt with drawing the first organization chart. We didn't really start drawing organization charts until we got to about the sixth step of the process." One of the individuals reporting to Lee will be in charge of national fleet and commercial sales. "That individual is going to have total responsibility for the fleet and commercial business outside of rental," Lee said. "So it's all the commercial fleet and commercial non-fleet business. It's all the dealer-based business as well as the direct business that we have factory reps out calling on customers for." Underneath this individual is the whole dealer contact organization and customer contact organization which are organized around the five regions, Lee said. "We consolidated the service responsibility for Pontiac-GMC, Chevrolet, and NAO Fleet into one service organization," Lee said. "The structure of the remarketing group hasn't changed much," Lee said. "We've had some personnel changes that we haven't publicly talked about yet." Rental will also be handled much the same way as it is handled currently, he said. Under brand organization, Hansen said the Chevrolet and GMC brands will be brought together differently. "Because there was not and is not a lot of need for major product differentiation in the commercial marketplace, we decided it would make a lot of sense to bring the separate nameplate brands into one organization, so we'll have one brand manager over commercial trucks," Hansen said. This brand manager will have responsibility for medium-duty trucks, some of the light-duty trucks, namely the HD3500, both GMC and Chevrolet. The other brand manager will be focused on vans, cutaways, and diesel engines. "We believe, with this new structure, we can more effectively bring a strong voice of the customer, and this allows us to speak with one strong voice for both marketing divisions," Hansen said. Hansen said Finance and Administration is a consolidation of finance and administration functions for GMC, Chevrolet, and NAO Fleet. Hansen said GM is continuing its Certified Used Vehicle Program, and some new initiatives in that area will come out sometime in 1999. In addition, Hansen said GM would continue to develop its small commercial non-fleet area. "The way we're structured, we'll develop brand marketing plans, specific field tactical plans, and the small fleet area will be given a lot of focus," Hansen said "And we've got a mechanism to take those plans and deploy them right down to the dealer level, where the small fleet business transacts. We've never had that before; there's been a complete disconnect between the various marketing divisions that were doing their own thing with their own dealer channels and our group to where now we can orchestrate that all together and bring it down to the dealership level."