Features
23 oct 19

First Fleet APAC Summit to be held in 2020

After the success of the first Fleet LatAm Conference and Training in Mexico, the horizons of the Global Fleet events expand to a new region: Asia Pacific. We will be announcing more details about the first Global Fleet APAC Summit soon, but here’s already a brief introduction to the event and its content.

The emerging region

When Global Fleet started covering the APAC region, most Global Fleet Managers were still focusing on the US and EU regions and, in some rare cases, on Central and South America. Over the last years however, a trend that has started in the mid-2000s has become so overwhelmingly obvious, that their attention had to be shifted to emerging markets.

This trend comes down to the success of global(ised) companies in APAC. The region used to be the production hub for the entire world, but has now formally become a region of consumers, proof of which is the expanding middle class and the highest GDP growth rates across the world. Add to this an increasingly healthy and well-educated young population, and the results are inevitable: Asia is forging its place in the global economy.

Consequently, as companies grow in Asia, the need for mobility becomes bigger, for people and companies alike.

Understanding the region

Due to their awareness of the APAC region as an economic power center, Global Fleet Managers are now looking to understand the diversity and complexity of the APAC Fleet ecosystem. Its diversity comes from the various stages of emergence (Singapore is more developed than Vietnam), its cultural differences (doing business in Japan is essentially different from doing business in India) and the mere size of the continent. Consequently, there’s a demand, stronger than ever, for a transparent how-to approach and comprehensive educational support.

Fleet and Mobility

Next to an overview of the APAC Fleet & Mobility ecosystem, the Summit will cover finance models and suppliers, technology and mobility. APAC might be a late bloomer when it comes to the traditional fleet industry, but it’s the global earliest and biggest adopter of mobility solutions, on-demand services and sharing industry. The first reason for this is – again – cultural: on-demand and sharing have always been part of Asia’s culture. Goods and services have been home-delivered for centuries and individual transport is a relatively new phenomenon, which makes the region the exact opposite of Europe or the US.

A second reason is the mobile digitization of the region: rather than going through the various form-factors that people in the West have known (personal computer to portable computer to mobile phone), most of the Asian population have become digital on their mobile devices. Therefore, consumer experiences needed to be as mobile and on-demand as the internet experience.

Practicalities

The APAC Summit will focus, not only on these conceptual topics, but also on extremely practical information that Global and Regional will help to manage their fleets in APAC. The target audience consists of Fleet Managers in various geographic capacities, but also of specialists in Procurement, Human Resources, Finance, Facility Management and General Management. The event will be held in Singapore, in April 2020.

More info and register on https://www.summitapac.globalfleet.com/

Authored by: Yves Helven