Tradition on a New Course

The DKV Mobil­i­ty Ser­vices Group com­bines a rich tra­di­tion with a future-ori­ent­ed course. Found­ed more than 85 years ago, it has helped shape the Euro­pean mobil­i­ty sec­tor in far­sight­ed ways. Today it is Europe’s lead­ing B2B mobil­i­ty ser­vices provider, trust­ed by small enter­pris­es and major truck­ing oper­a­tions alike. Taxi com­pa­nies, doc­tors’ offices, gar­den­ers, and bakers—anyone using a van for their busi­ness or run­ning an entire fleet of vehi­cles can ben­e­fit from DKV’s services.

DKV’s suc­cess is based on its vision of han­dling all of its cus­tomers’ mobil­i­ty-relat­ed tasks so the lat­ter are free to focus on their core areas of activ­i­ty. The com­pa­ny’s trans­ac­tions have increased to a vol­ume of 9.3 bil­lion euros in 2020. And it con­tin­ues to pur­sue change on a sys­tem­at­ic basis, rein­vent­ing itself with the aim of guid­ing its cus­tomers from the old to the new world of mobility—profitably and sus­tain­ably. In addi­tion to the fuel cards that laid the foun­da­tion for its suc­cess, DKV’s busi­ness model is based on inno­v­a­tive and dig­i­tal ser­vices for cus­tomers and on sus­tain­able forms of mobil­i­ty. The face of this change, and also its dri­ving force, is CEO Marco van Kal­leveen. A native of the Nether­lands, he has head­ed DKV since 2019 and is respon­si­ble for main­tain­ing the pace on the road to change.

“Improv­ing companies—making them vibrant and successful—is what I love to do,” says van Kal­leveen. And his record con­firms his words. Since leav­ing McK­in­sey, van Kalleveen’s work has includ­ed guid­ing the trans­for­ma­tion of port­fo­lio com­pa­nies for Bain Cap­i­tal. He then strate­gi­cal­ly restruc­tured the glob­al depart­ment for domes­tic activ­i­ties at the TNT Express inter­na­tion­al couri­er ser­vice. He now seeks to do the same with DKV.

Van Kal­leveen is build­ing the future of the mobil­i­ty ser­vice provider on three pil­lars: growth in the core busi­ness area, a focus on inno­va­tions and dig­i­tal solu­tions, and strong lead­er­ship in the field of renew­able ener­gies. In early 2019, Porsche Con­sult­ing helped lay the foun­da­tion on which these three pil­lars stand. “With their down-to-earth approach and pro­found insid­er exper­tise, the con­sul­tants were very help­ful to us in build­ing up our busi­ness oper­a­tions,” says van Kal­leveen. When he joined DKV in April of 2019—shortly after Porsche Con­sult­ing had fin­ished the project—he lost no time in putting the man­age­ment con­sul­tants’ pro­pos­als into prac­tice. These includ­ed open­ing a pro­duc­tion unit and uti­liz­ing a cat­a­logue of poten­tial sources of savings.

An impor­tant part of van Kal­leveen’s growth strat­e­gy is to acquire addi­tion­al busi­ness in Europe. DKV is already active in more than 40 coun­tries on the con­ti­nent and con­tin­ues to expand its cus­tomer base and col­lab­o­ra­tive ven­tures in all areas. Its plat­form approach plays a key role here. The com­pa­ny uses part­ner­ships to con­sol­i­date the ser­vices of dif­fer­ent providers—including fuel sta­tion chains, toll col­lec­tion com­pa­nies, freight exchanges, and vehi­cle repair shops—and make them avail­able to its cus­tomers, there­by over­com­ing bar­ri­ers posed by inter­na­tion­al bor­ders and lan­guage differences.

The best exam­ple for this approach is how the DKV fuel card has evolved. This card lets hold­ers pay with­out cash at more than 65,000 part­ner fuel sta­tions, use the cur­rent num­ber of approx­i­mate­ly 185,000 charg­ing sta­tions, pay tolls for high­ways, bridges, and tun­nels, and also pay park­ing fees. The trans­ac­tions are com­piled on an online por­tal that enables own­ers to man­age their card lim­its and even down­load final state­ments for tax purposes.

The DKV card is the nexus for addi­tion­al services—thanks in part to the new tech­ni­cal solu­tions that DKV is devel­op­ing. For exam­ple, large ship­ping com­pa­nies can pro­vide cards to their dri­vers and also install the DKV BOX in their vehi­cles in order to pay tolls fully auto­mat­i­cal­ly in dif­fer­ent Euro­pean coun­tries. DKV also offers a Europe-wide emer­gency ser­vice with refer­rals to part­ner work­shops as well as coun­try-spe­cif­ic assis­tance in han­dling bureau­crat­ic mat­ters. It sup­ports cus­tomers in every­thing from pre-financ­ing Bel­gium’s min­er­al oil rebates to putting France’s min­i­mum wage into practice.

“We have more than 250,000 cus­tomers through­out Europe and more than five mil­lion users of our prod­ucts and devices,” says van Kal­leveen. “We also have a net­work of sup­pli­ers we can con­nect them with.” DKV is there­by uni­fy­ing Europe’s frag­ment­ed mobil­i­ty land­scape and turn­ing the com­pa­ny’s slo­gan of “You drive, we care” into a scal­able busi­ness model that also attracts small and very small enter­pris­es. Just like a large ship­ping com­pa­ny, a vil­lage baker also has vans that require fuel­ing, park­ing, and bookkeeping—just in a dif­fer­ent mag­ni­tude. As van Kal­leveen explains, “We offer an over­all ser­vice to our customers.”

Since van Kal­leveen joined the com­pa­ny, DKV has com­plete­ly or par­tial­ly acquired eleven com­pa­nies in dif­fer­ent countries—while con­tin­u­ing to expand its part­ner­ships with fuel sta­tions and charg­ing net­works. The acqui­si­tions fall into two cat­e­gories. Some are intend­ed to gain spe­cif­ic region­al exper­tise and skills and devel­op new cus­tomer groups. For exam­ple, in late May 2021 DKV strength­ened its pres­ence in east­ern Europe by acquir­ing three providers of main­te­nance solu­tions for com­mer­cial fleets from Esto­nia, Lithua­nia, and Poland.

With the other cat­e­go­ry of acqui­si­tions, van Kal­leveen is pur­su­ing his strat­e­gy of rais­ing the level of dig­i­tal­iza­tion in DKV’s prod­uct range. “Inno­v­a­tive uses of tech­nol­o­gy give rise to new busi­ness fields, and we are con­sis­tent­ly ahead of the curve here,” he reports. One exam­ple is the acqui­si­tion in Jan­u­ary 2020 of Styletron­ic, a lead­ing provider of GPS and logis­tics man­age­ment ser­vices from Aus­tria. Thanks to Styletron­ic’s exper­tise, and in par­tic­u­lar its real-time track­ing of deliv­er­ies and fleets, DKV was able to bring DKV LIVE onto the mar­ket just eight months later. This sys­tem gives ship­ping com­pa­nies a por­tal on which to view the loca­tions of their vehi­cles at all times. DKV LIVE also cal­cu­lates esti­mat­ed deliv­ery times based on dri­vers’ indi­vid­ual per­for­mance patterns—an absolute nov­el­ty in Europe’s logis­tics sector.

DKV LIVE also helps the com­pa­ny keep its promis­es about the envi­ron­ment. “We want to play a major role in facil­i­tat­ing the tran­si­tion in mobil­i­ty to a more effi­cient and sus­tain­able future,” says van Kal­leveen. “That’s why we’re try­ing to become the lead­ing provider of sus­tain­able ser­vices in our indus­try.” For exam­ple, DKV wants to help its cus­tomers reduce their CO₂ inten­si­ty by 30 per­cent by 2030. DKV LIVE helps by cal­cu­lat­ing the ideal route for each trip, which reduces the amount of fuel need­ed. The inte­grat­ed dig­i­tal freight exchange also helps by let­ting ship­ping com­pa­nies see if addi­tion­al cargo jobs are avail­able along its routes and to prompt­ly book them if so. This pre­vents empty and extra trips—and helps to fur­ther lower car­bon emissions.

More­over, DKV helps its cus­tomers switch to elec­tric vehi­cles if they so desire. To do so, it found­ed the Charge4Europe joint ven­ture with the Inno­gy e‑fuel provider, which offers access to a com­pre­hen­sive net­work of charg­ing points through­out Europe. Since late April 2021, this part­ner­ship has also includ­ed high-speed charg­ing points at Total fuel sta­tions in France, Ger­many, Bel­gium, and the Netherlands.

The shift in strat­e­gy is already show­ing pos­i­tive results. Thanks to the larg­er cus­tomer base, new prod­ucts, and cor­po­rate strat­e­gy, sales in 2020 grew by 10 per­cent. Van Kal­leveen is excit­ed about the future. “Ger­many has his­tor­i­cal­ly been our home and we con­tin­ue to be very strong here. But we are also grow­ing very fast in France, Italy, Aus­tria, and east­ern Europe.”