When I speak to our customers, I don’t start with market share or sales volumes. I start with a single, sobering figure; €700. That is the approximate cost to a sole trader for a single day their van is off the road.
It isn’t just an inconvenience; it’s a day’s wages gone, a reputation at risk, and a promise to a customer broken. At Ford Pro, we’ve realised that our job isn’t just to sell vehicles — it’s to keep the "engine room" of the European economy moving.
We’ve built a structural advantage that no competitor can easily replicate. With over 800 Transit Centres and a network of 200 accredited converters, we have the largest dedicated commercial footprint on the continent. But the real "secret sauce" is how we are now layering intelligence over that physical scale.
“At Ford Pro, we’ve realised that our job isn’t just to sell vehicles — it’s to keep the 'engine room' of the European economy moving”Hans Schep, General Manager, Ford Pro, Europe
The Power of Uptime
If we want to summarise our progress, we have to look at how we’ve built the foundation for this revolution. Since 2021, our FORDLiive Centres have forged a deep, real-time connection with our Transit Centre network. This synergy has fundamentally accelerated repair times and delivered a staggering 3,160,476 additional days of uptime — over three million days where vans were out earning money instead of sitting in workshops.
But the true potential lies in the intelligence of the vehicles themselves. Today, we have over 1.2 million connected Ford Pro vehicles across Europe generating six million health signals every day. This isn't just data; it is the key to individual customer productivity. By utilising this connected vehicle health, we can now offer our new Uptime Services to keep businesses moving at every scale.
Until now, these sophisticated services were primarily delivered by central Ford teams looking after our largest fleet partners. But the next stage of our strategy is the most exciting. We are now empowering our dealers to take that same proactive superpower and use it to serve their local small business customers. With Dealer Uptime Services, we are bringing the full weight of Ford’s data expertise to the smaller enterprises.
Becoming a Productivity Partner
Dealer Uptime Services transform the role of dealers from service providers into productivity partners. This is a new superpower for our network. For the first time, dealers will have access to fast-flowing data for every connected Ford in their area. They won’t need to wait for the plumber or the electrician to call with a breakdown; the dealers will call them first.
No one else in the industry is doing this — combining fast flowing data and software to generate actionable insights that lead to real action on the workshop floor. We are now scaling this across our Transit Centres, and the impact is transformative. By seeing a developing issue before the driver does, dealers can pre-order parts and prep the workshop ramps before the vehicle even arrives or, where possible, deploy a Mobile Service Van to complete the work at the customer's own location, keeping them on the job and out of the workshop entirely.
This reduces key-to-key repair time by up to 50 per cent. It is a massive win for the customer, who gets back to work faster, and a win for our dealers, as it opens up significant workshop capacity for new customers.
Smarter Data, Local Heart
By combining human-centred design with the power of data, I truly believe we are making ourselves indispensable. When we reduce a customer’s downtime, we aren't just servicing a machine; we are securing their trust and ensuring that Ford Pro remains the strongest asset in the European market and their most reliable partner.
The data makes us smarter, but our dealers make us local. Together, we are making sure that when a Ford customer opens their doors in the morning, they can always get to work.
Hans Schep is General Manager, Ford Pro, Europe
