F&I Management & Training

""Almost all our growth has been winning market share from our competitors"" - Robert Jones, ASE

To most people it’s still just plain old Trevor Jones. But the 63-year-old footy referee and car dealer specialist accountant who founded the business is chairman of an organisation whose full Sunday title is ASE Ltd or Automotive Services Europe and has been for the last 20 years.

ASE makes a satisfying study for the Making Money series because its task is to ensure that dealers make as much money as they can from their trade on a daily basis.

But ASE is also in the business of turning itself into a successful international business with a tidy little profit of its own.

In 2009 it achieved a margin of 20% on worldwide turnover of £11 million.

The principal trick is sorting through monthly trading stats for car brands and their dealers and then selling the data back to them in a form that allows them to run the business more efficiently.

And with the business now managed by the younger son of the founder, there is more and more emphasis on getting the output down to such a concise summary that it can be retrieved as one page on a PDA.

Managing director Robert Jones (33) keeps in mind a vision of the zone manager pulling up outside today’s first dealer call and taking his gizmo out off his pocket for a refresher on the financial summary before he goes in.

That’s the snapshot of ASE at its most basic, but it is becoming much more than that.

“We have 169 bespoke management solutions across 31 countries and 29 languages. In the UK there are 350 clients for professional services and we work with 86% of the UK manufacturers.”

There are 110 employees in the UK, but there are also offices in Spain and Portugal, the Netherlands, Florida and Russia from March.

Other countries are covered by contractors while the business volume grows. Between them the country offices process 11,000 sets of business a month and ASE has just spent £1 million on a new computer system to crunch it all. All profit is being reinvested currently.

Robert Jones has taken on the task of bringing in the new business while elder brother Mike delivers the products.

Robert is a veteran of Arthur Anderson, where his specialisation became structured finance for large investment.

He joined the family firm as sales director in 2006 and took charge in March 2008. All the non-family shareholders have been bought out; a 3i heavy-weight has joined the board as a non-exec and in Robert’s judgement “in the last 12 months we have transformed the business into a dynamic commercial enterprise”.

The sales pitch to the manufacturers is a simple one: “Reduce the risk of having a dealer network.”
Robert Jones will also tell the clients that he has a better chance than other accountants and consultants of adding value for the carmakers because all the professionals he employs have car company experience.

Although he does not work for all 26 manufacturers in any market, he does work for all of them in one country or another.

Increasingly, OEMs want more than the raw data from their own network. They want some tailored market analysis as well.

Within the customer companies there is demand for different levels of data for different staff. The boss will want the simplified summary. Managers need the full detail on a small section.

Technology change is very demanding: “We have gone in only two or three years from 20-page documents to interactive web delivery.”

The business plan is simple enough. Every time they pick up a new OEM as a customer for one market they can pitch for business in other markets where those OEMs need data.

They can also go for OEMS in markets where they have not got them as clients. And they can add more services for the clients they have got. It’s methodical, successful and profitable.

There are still new markets to bring in. The US business has only been under development for three years. Africa and Asia are untouched.

There are competitors and in the UK the main players who also provide accountancy and tax services to the trade are BDO Stoy Hayward, Baker Tilly and Grant Thornton.

DATED: 21.01.10

FEED: AM