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Burning rubber
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ATS Euromaster is the UK's largest tyre network.
Andy Salter speaks to managing director Ian Stuart to find out how he is staying ahead of the competition.
Ian Stuart has a straightforward approach to his role as group managing director at ATS Euromaster: "We all know what we have to do: we just have to do it better," he says.This has become the organisation's ethos, which should he good news for operators employing the services of the nationwide tyre and service network.
ATS Euromaster has been through an upheaval over the past five years, which included a restructuring of the organisation. For Stuart, the times for strategic reviews and navel gazing are in the past the company has a clear job to do and he is focused on ensuring it gets done.
Stuart took over as group managing director the fourth MD in eight years in the first quarter of 2006; after spending some time watching and listening, he is now pushing forward to improve the performance of the company. "We're taking a good business and making it even better," he says. "We've been assessing the business and are now putting the action plans in place. The improvements will manifest themselves in our results and the service to our customers."
Customer research carried out by the company in the past indicated that ATS Euromaster wasn't hitting all the right notes, Stuart adds. "For instance, the research indicated that doing transactions with us wasn't that easy and we were getting problems with rejected invoices. Invoice problems aren't just annoying from the customers' perspective,they also give us a cashflow problem."
Considerable improvement
The company has recently carried out a sizeable piece of customer research, interviewing 800 customers, and the results are much more encouraging. On value for money, listening to and understanding customer needs and understanding a customer's business, ATS has shown considerable improvement over the past three years but Stuart recognises there's more work to be done. The focus is very much on customer service and the company has set up a new department specifically to ensure service levels are as high as possible.
"The new 'Group Services' team has its own director who reports directly to me," says Stuart. "The objective is to support the key account managers and ensure service levels are met. Customers expect us to meet these service levels and we have to perform at the highest level to make sure we don't let anyone down."
Throughout our interview Stuart is keen to hammer home the point that ATS is firmly focused on ensuring the customer comes first and is committed to aligning the business to that end. "This business is not rocket science," he says. "A tyre is designed to last x number of miles. Our objective is to ensure that through the selection of the right tyre for the job and correct care through its life it achieves that life. By effective tyre management we can offer real benefits to our customers. We're looking for every opportunity to take cost out of an operator's business.Through better husbandry they will use fewer tyres."
Customer relations
-1. m not a rubber merchant.That's an outmoded way to measure and monitor this business.This isn't about how many tyres we sell; it's about serving our customers, listening to what they have to say, understanding what they want and then delivering. We're not governed by the number of tyres we fit. Indeed, the more we service a fleet and build a strong understanding of their business requirements, the fewer tyres we'll tend to fit." ATS Euromaster is a £315m-turnover business employing 3,600 people. The nationwide network of service centres is second to none in this sector and with 470 centres dedicated to truck tyres. ATS can rightly claim to be the UK leader.
All truck centres have dedicated roadside response vehicles, which operate via a rapidresponse call centre based in Birmingham. This handles 10,000 response calls every month and they are measured by strict key performance indicators (KPIs) covering response to call, time to arrival at the customer and then time to completion. Stuart is satisfied with the current perfortnance,although he is always looking for improvements.
In addition to the truck centres and rapidresponse fleet, ATS Euromaster also employs 50 dedicated vehicle inspectors monitoring the tyres at customers' premises. They are armed with handheld computers to feed the information back into the ATS system so that work can be triggered for action.
The ATS Euromaster business is strong and robust, according to the financial figures — and what's more, the customers appear to appreciate the efforts the company is making to serve their needs. "Operationally, this organisation went through a big change a couple of years ago," says Stuart."I'm glad we made those decisions now as there are clear benefits to our customers.
"Our current objective is to continue that good work and keep doing it better," •