International full service car leasing provider, Athlon Car Lease, has implemented Sofico’s Miles software system in Spain and Italy ahead of a wider European roll-out that will occur over the next two years.

Athlon, headquartered in the Netherlands with a fleet in excess of 120,000 vehicles, also operates in nine other European markets and manages a total of more than 234,000 vehicles. It plans to expand into new markets in the coming years, according to the company.

The company has now implemented the Miles automotive leasing and fleet management software system in Spain and Italy to manage its fleet operations in both countries. Both countries have similar company profiles of around 6,000-7,000 vehicles supported by 45 employees.

Athlon then plans to use the experience gained from these two implementations to introduce the Miles system into Germany, where it operates a fleet of around 28,000 vehicles, by the end of 2013. This will be followed by a wider roll-out across its fleets in the other countries.

So far the process has gone very smoothly and the company was able to implement Miles in only seven months in Spain and just five in Italy, thanks largely to Miles’ refined implementation methodology, according to Athlon.

Miles is delivered with a pre-configured reference implementation setup which reflects common processes and best practices within the leasing industry and speeds up the implementation process dramatically for end users, typically some 6-12 months faster than many standard system implementations. The implementation setup is also highly configurable which allows it to be tweaked to exactly meet the fleet customer’s requirements and to assure optimal support of individual customers' processes, according to the company.