Streamlining the complexity of RFI for fleet buyers and suppliers

Fleet procurement has always been challenging for buyers and suppliers as it involves a complex requesting process (RFIs, RFP, RFQs) that are over complicated, long-winded, disorganised, and out-of-date. 

The complexity of this process goes something like this: 

• A buyer puts out an RFI via industry websites/noticeboards/trade advertising (or some such).
• The RFI is picked up by prospective suppliers
• Suppliers must then respond, usually within tight deadlines to a series of lengthy and involved questions. 
• The process ties up sales resources for weeks and sometimes months.

Once responses have been submitted to fleet and mobility buyers, procurement staff must then read through all the unstructured material, compare and contrast applications and then make a short list from which to request more specific information. And this is just the initial request. Add in the time and resources needed to compile and review RFQs and RFPs and it becomes a long game of blind man’s buff. 

The primary problem with this traditional requisition process is that it’s based on strategies that belong to the olden days. It worked before globalisation and massive competition but it doesn’t work anymore. It’s inefficient and ineffective in the digital age. 

What’s needed now is a global platform that draws together buyers and suppliers, with effective, quick, and easy processes buyers can use to evaluate vendors. This must be a process that involves collaborating, communicating, sharing knowledge, and staying organised and one in which both sides win. 

Welcome to the Global Fleet Marketplace

Launched at the Fleet Europe Summit in November 2021, the Global Fleet Marketplace is an RFI tool and search engine enabling fleet and mobility managers to identify products, services, and vendors across the globe in the automotive, fleet and mobility ecosystem.

Fleet and mobility buyers: fastback to your perfect supplier shortlist

The question is: how can you be sure that vendors will be a perfect match for your fleet and mobility needs without going through the laborious RFI process? The Global Fleet Marketplace is a worldwide RFI tool, designed from the ground up by fleet and mobility managers for fleet and mobility managers. These are people who understand your needs, wants, and pain points when it comes to choosing vendors. 

MarketPlace provides you with discovery, search, compare, and contact tools. You can search a database of over 400 suppliers (and counting) at local, national, and international levels using keywords, such as “vehicle leasing” or by category, such as "Insurance". It’s free for buyers to register on Global Fleet MarketPlace. You can also use filters to refine your search. This is the “search by goal” tool, which asks specific questions enabling you to filter down your ideal list of suppliers, thus making the whole process more efficient. Once you’ve finished your search you can click the “get in touch” button to immediately contact your chosen suppliers. 

Fleet and Mobility Suppliers: getting in front of the right customers at the right time

The Global Fleet MarketPlace has been designed for suppliers wishing to promote their businesses to fleet and mobility managers around the world. It delivers the ideal platform from which to promote your products and services and get in front of the right people, efficiently. 

The Marketplace locates you at the fingertips of your potential customers. You can showcase your business’s true capabilities to the right customers that will be profitable for you. Here are a couple of simple tips and tricks to getting the most out of the platform: 

• Ensure that all your products and services are listed.
• Segment your offerings by country, category, and size. 

Uniquely, the Marketplace also has a specifically-designed lead generation engine that provides you with qualified customer requests from prospects who are looking for you. It’s free for suppliers to create a company card on the Global Fleet Marketplace. A paid entry ensures you can profile your company and truly showcase your products and services across several categories, multinationally. 

The fleet and mobility ecosystems continue to grow in complexity so the Global Fleet Marketplace provides a streamlined solution for matching buyers and suppliers. As registering and creating company cards is free, you have nothing to lose and everything to gain by giving it a go. 

Glossary of terms: 

• RFI - Request for Information
• RFP - Request for Proposal
• RFQ - Request for Quotation