GM creates new business unit to house fleet products, services

General Motors Co. on Wednesday evening announced a new business unit encompassing products, technologies and services that can help its fleet customers.

GM Envolve is a one-stop shop for the automaker to sell offerings from parts to software to customers. Steve Carlisle, president of GM North America, revealed GM Envolve on Wednesday at the automaker's annual Fleet Solutions Summit to an audience of nearly 850 business customers and dealers.

“GM Envolve will leverage the complete power of General Motors to offer the best solutions to customers and further reinforce why we’ve increased our fleet sales for five consecutive quarters,” Carlisle said in a statement. “Today begins the GM Envolve journey, where we will bring our customers in to create tailored solutions to meet their unique business challenges.”

GM Envolve will give customers access to the automaker's products through a single account executive to simplify the purchasing process. The account executives will be supported by a team of experts to create a package of products for each customer. GM Envolve customers will eventually be able to manage their GM portfolio in a coming digital platform, the automaker said.

"It's an interesting evolution that we're seeing in the commercial fleet business," said Sam Abuelsamid, principal research analyst leading Guidehouse Insights. "It used to be for Ford, Ram, GM, they would have their fleet sales guys that would go out and they would talk to the big fleets and all they did was just sell them vehicles. And now they are trying to sell so much more."

Commercial services and products are a big business for automakers. GM rival Ford Motor Co. has Ford Pro, a business unit within the Dearborn automaker for commercial vehicles, telematics and services. In May 2021, Ford announced the creation of the dedicated commercial vehicle services and distribution business within the company. Ford Pro's first-quarter earnings this year nearly tripled from a year ago to $1.4 billion on revenue of $13.2 billion. In 2023, Ford expects Ford Pro to have operating profits of nearly $6 billion.

The advantage for GM in creating GM Envolve and for Ford with Ford Pro "is that they have one point of contact for their customers, and then they can combine all of these different offerings that they have internally, and they can tailor a package for each individual customer based on what their needs are," Abuelsamid said.

The products and solutions offered through GM Envolve for both internal combustion engine vehicles and electric vehicles cover five areas:

• Mobility: Includes products and services like GM Genuine Parts, AC Delco and Certified Service and Accessories
• Energy: Includes stationary storage, integrated charging, cloud management and GM’s Hydrotec fuel cell technology
• Delivery: Includes a portfolio of hardware and software solutions through GM's BrightDrop business, which offers electric delivery options
• Insight: Includes intelligent software through GM's OnStar Business Solutions
• Growth: Includes consultancy services to help customers maximize performance

GM Envolve will be led by Steve Hill, vice president of GM’s commercial growth strategies and operations, and Ed Peper will lead day-to-day operations and all fleet vehicle sales as U.S. vice president of GM Envolve.

"This marks the beginning of the GM Envolve journey as the premier means of delivering solutions at scale that only GM can provide," Peper said on a press call introducing the business unit. "We know our business customers intimately. We've listened, we've worked with many of them over the years to understand their biggest challenges, their toughest pain points. And GM Envolve is born out of those listening sessions."

Hill said GM will not eliminate the business units that will now fall under GM Envolve. Rather, the automaker is just "streamlining the point of contact" by making GM Envolve the primary connection for the business units it covers. Subject matter experts within each unit will still be needed.

"If there's a difficult energy solution the customer is looking for, we don't expect our GM Envolve account executive to know everything about energy, but, boy, they have subject matter experts that they can tap and bring into that meeting."

GM did not provide revenue expectations for the new business unit but Hill said there's "huge opportunity."

Peper added that GM's fleet division has been working most closely with OnStar in the last couple of years and the service now has 520,000 paid customers in the fleet space and "with that comes a lot of revenues, EBIT and everything else so it all contributes to the increases in revenue and profits that we want to have the next several years."

Staff writer Jordyn Grzelewski contributed.

khall@detroitnews.com

Twitter: @bykaleahall