The Irishman keeping things motoring all across Canada

When Frank Lennon was head of Audi aftersales in Ireland, his longest commute to see a dealer was two hours by car. Now it's four hours by plane.

Lennon moved to Toronto last year as head of aftersales for Audi Canada and his new territory comprises 46 dealers spread over 4½ time zones.

“It’s the vastness and the distances that come as a surprise and leave you with no option but to be on the road two out of four weeks,” he says. “This was tough on my wife in particular at the beginning as we arrived during one of Canada’s worst winters.

“I was away and the kids were in school and it was very difficult for her to get out and meet people. But now we love living here. It’s a completely different way of life. We can go skiing in the winter 10 minutes from the house and in the summer activities switch to the many lakes in the area. It’s also great that our two daughters have started to pick up French as a second language.”

Opportunities

Lennon’s job in Canada is much the same as at home in that its focus is on raising dealer standards. This includes everything from coaching dealers and training dealership staff to warranty, spare parts supply and technical support.

“Basically aftersales covers every customer touch point after the vehicle purchase and all the processes that make them happen,” Lennon says.

“Regarding opportunities for my career in Canada, one area I’m really getting exposed to is logistics. The sheer size of the country has made me look at things through a very different lens.”

Audi sells about 27,000 cars in Canada every year, the majority of which (even the saloons) are four-wheel-drive. As in Ireland, Audi is a premium brand but it faces much stiffer competition. It has to share the market with US luxury marques, Lexus and other upmarket Japanese brands such as Infiniti and Acura.

Lennon, who was born in Portaferry, Co Down, is a motor industry veteran whose career began on the shop floor as an automotive electrician. He then worked in service and aftersales at dealer level before taking on engineering and aftersales roles at Opel Ireland and then at BMW Ireland.

In 2009 he became aftersales manager for Audi Ireland and in 2011 was appointed as group aftersales director for the Volkswagen group with responsibility for all five of its brands in Ireland. He moved to Canada in November 2013 to take up his current job.

“Audi approached me when the position became available and sold me on the idea of relocating,” Lennon says. “For me it could not have been easier as they looked after everything.

“Once we had convinced immigration that my particular skill set was not easily found in Canada and that part of my brief working for Audi would be to develop local expertise, the process was quite simple.

“Within the larger VW Group, there are good opportunities to work in many different countries. We saw it as an opportunity to offer our children the chance of experiencing something different.”

What surprised Lennon most about his new market was that it was far less developed than he had anticipated.

“I had always assumed the North American motor industry was technologically further advanced than we were and, while that may be true for vehicle sales, we are years ahead in the aftersales arena. IT solutions we implemented in Ireland five years ago to gain efficiencies in dealer process and performance analytics are only being looked at in Canada now,” he says.

Lennon finds the Canadians “very genuine and polite people to work with”, but overall the business culture is conservative and the decision-making process slower than in Ireland.

“I have a team of 25 people and one of my tasks since I arrived has been empowering them to make decisions,” he says. “I have also had to work on getting them to engage with me about the business and to develop their own opinions and to express them. That doesn’t come easily when your natural inclination is to be cautious and conservative. It was also surprising that things that are so old hat in Ireland were completely new to them.”

Research

Lennon says that there are good job opportunities for Irish people in Canada. However, he points out that the opportunities differ markedly between provinces.

“The economy in Canada remains very stable, even considering the current exchange rate with the US dollar. But for anyone coming here, my advice is to do your research well as to where the job you’re interested in is based. For example, if you want to work in Montreal you really need good French and I rue the day I didn’t take it seriously enough in school.

“If the job offer is for the Prairie region, be aware of just how tough an environment this can be: very cold in the winter, very hot in the summer and often a very long way from the next major city.

“The best source of information is on the International Experience Canada website. Canada is a beautiful country but unusual in that 80 per cent of the population is concentrated along the border with the US. That sort of tells you a lot about what to expect when it comes to geography and how society is arranged.”