Opinion

Spread the ideas, not the virus: At war with an invisible enemy from your own living room

It’s 5.30 in the morning and I couldn’t sleep any longer. So I decided to prepare a personal message to all of you to update you on where we are at Arval. This morning, more than 7,000 of us across the globe are working online and away from the office, in split teams as defined at Arval and BNP Paribas top management level. The IT and Digital teams have been impressive, our business teams are safe and can continue to focus on their mission; supporting our clients and partners in quickly changing circumstances, keeping your drivers and vehicles mobile, even in the countries where full lockdowns are in place already.

Today is an important day, as we are briefing our commercial teams worldwide on the Covid-19 commercial toolkit that we have co-constructed with our countries. Adapted short term mobility solutions for the specific Covid-19 situation have been defined, tailor-made and flexible solutions for the time by which we will get out of this tunnel just as well. Business continuity is key!

“Work from home, if you can, protect yourselves and thus the others as well”. That is the key message to our staff. In fact it has been the message that authorities on all levels have expressed across Europe. All of this goes for fleet customers and their drivers as well, of course. Don’t worry too much about new vehicles on order for now, we have solutions for you awaiting these to become available. And keep your existing one for now, because you do need one, of course. We are also there to help you save costs in these uncertain times, starting by supporting you with any contract extension programmes that you are potentially considering.

In the coming hours and days, we will reach out to many of you, if you haven’t been in touch already. We will listen to you, assess what we can do to help and offer you the solutions that we have thought of and are ready to deploy. We are determined to get rid of this invisible enemy from our own living rooms individually and as a global team, working with our friends from the Element-Arval Global Alliance as well by the way. We will help you get through this crisis and back to business-as-usual as soon as possible, putting in place these flexible and alternative mobility solutions that we have all been discussing in recent times, in combination with the good old company car, progressively more electrified for sure.

Stay home, protect yourselves and your families, we will be in touch!

Have a good day!

Author: Bart Beckers, CCO, Arval

With the Blog 'Spread the ideas, not the virus' we aim to support the fleet & mobility industry at times of the global spread of the coronavirus. We give the opportunity to our community to express their opinion, their ideas, their support in the format of a letter of max. 500 words to our community. It’s your personal insight to share with your peers and partners in the industry. Send your letter to Steven Schoefs, sschoefs@nexuscommunication.be