Making grenke Easier to Do Business With: Suzy Watkins’ Vision for 2027

For Suzy Watkins, operations should never be thought of as the part of a business that sits quietly in the background.

In fact, she sees it as quite the opposite.

Having recently stepped into the role of Managing Director of Administration at grenke UK, Suzy has been considering what the business needs to achieve through the remainder of 2026 and into 2027. Two priorities sit firmly at the top of that agenda: customers and people.

Her ambition is straightforward: make grenke simpler, more efficient and easier to do business with.

But behind that apparently simple objective is a much bigger vision for how grenke UK grows.

Growth starts with the customer journey

Suzy takes on the role at a time when the SME market presents both opportunity and uncertainty.

She sees UK SMEs as extraordinarily resilient, but recognises that businesses continue to operate with a strong focus on costs and cashflow. Against that backdrop, she believes leasing has an important role to play by giving businesses another way to access the equipment and technology they need without placing the same immediate pressure on cash.

That external environment is influencing Suzy's priorities internally too.

If grenke wants to capture the opportunity she sees in the UK market, she believes the experience around the finance needs to be as straightforward as possible.

Digitalisation is part of that. Suzy acknowledges that there is more for grenke to do and that some developments are naturally determined at Group level. Her focus is therefore also on what can be improved locally: having the right people available to customers, strengthening customer service and making existing processes more efficient.

It comes back to a phrase that appears repeatedly in Suzy's vision:

Be easy to do business with.

Getting the right people in the right place

One of the most interesting parts of Suzy's plans for 2027 isn't about introducing another process. It's about questioning whether grenke's existing teams are organised around the customer in the right way.

She wants to look more closely at the relationship between Sales and Operations and consider where different responsibilities naturally belong.

Her thinking is that colleagues focused primarily on service, administration, efficiency and the customer experience should be able to concentrate on exactly that. In turn, salespeople should have more freedom to spend their time selling and developing commercial relationships.

As Suzy explains:

It isn't simply an organisational exercise.

It's about designing grenke around the journey its customers actually experience.

And there is now an opportunity to do more of that locally.

Suzy describes greater autonomy being given to individual countries to map their own customer journeys, recognising that markets and customer behaviours differ. For the UK team, she sees that as an opportunity to rethink established ways of working rather than automatically accepting that something should continue because it has always been done that way.

Resilience doesn't mean standing still

That philosophy also connects closely with grenke's Renewed Lease of Life research.

The latest research painted a picture of SMEs operating with much shorter planning horizons and placing increasing importance on resilience and flexibility.

Suzy believes resilience needs to mean more than simply surviving difficult market conditions.

For her, it means disciplined growth.

Businesses need a longer-term direction, but they also need to be prepared to revisit it as circumstances change. Suzy talks about looking beyond a seven-month horizon towards a 24-month plan – while accepting that the plan itself may need to move.

It's an important distinction.

Resilience shouldn't become another word for caution. A resilient organisation should have strong enough foundations to change direction when the market demands it.

And Suzy intends to apply that thinking to grenke itself.

Technology – without losing the human advantage

Inevitably, that means considering the role technology will play in grenke's future.

AI and digitalisation are developing rapidly across financial services, and Suzy expects them to become increasingly important within grenke too.

But she is equally clear about what shouldn't disappear in the process.

People.

For Suzy, technology and human service aren't competing ideas. Technology can improve processes and efficiency, while people provide something different: relationships, judgement and customer service.

She believes that human element can help grenke differentiate itself.

It's particularly relevant to grenke's regional model, where teams around the UK can build relationships with customers, suppliers and partners in their own markets.

The goal isn't therefore to digitise for the sake of digitisation.

It's to use technology where it makes things easier while retaining people where people make the experience better.

Changing what people think of grenke

Suzy's ambitions also extend beyond how grenke operates to what grenke is known for.

Historically, she believes the UK business has been strongly associated with traditional photocopier and telecoms leasing.

She wants to broaden that perception.

Sustainable technology is one area she identifies as an important opportunity, alongside a wider range of equipment and sectors. It is both a commercial opportunity and, from grenke's perspective, a way of creating a more diversified business for the future.

As technology changes established markets, Suzy believes grenke needs to change with them.

Her ambition is for the brand to become associated with something broader: a more sustainable, future-focused and agile finance business.

That's a significant shift.

It moves the conversation from what grenke has traditionally financed towards what UK businesses need next.

Ambition needs people behind it

There is another side to Suzy's leadership philosophy that runs throughout the conversation.

She is highly delivery-focused. She talks openly about efficiency, commercial viability, planning and accountability.

But she also places considerable emphasis on giving people the support and opportunity they need to perform.

Suzy and Head of Operations James Burton regularly meet with team leaders and colleagues doing the day-to-day work to understand what's working and where more support is needed. She points to training, HR support and access to leadership as important parts of giving people confidence as requirements and regulations continue to change.

Her own career reflects that belief in development.

Long before becoming an MD, Suzy had decided that she wanted to reach director level. Rather than waiting for opportunities to appear, she describes actively seeking projects beyond her immediate job description, asking managers what experience she needed and putting herself forward for work that would move her closer to her goal.

Today, as a Managing Director and mother of two young children, she is particularly interested in making leadership feel visible and achievable for other women coming through the industry.

That gives the people part of her strategy a very personal dimension.

A simpler grenke. A broader grenke. A more local grenke.

There are plenty of individual projects sitting beneath Suzy's plans for 2027.

But taken together, they point towards something much simpler.

She wants grenke UK to understand its customers better, organise itself around their experience, give its people clearer opportunities to use their strengths and broaden the markets in which the business operates.

She wants technology to make things easier without losing the human relationships that differentiate the business.

And she wants greater local autonomy to translate into decisions that reflect the realities of the UK market.

Perhaps most importantly, she doesn't see resilience and growth as opposites.

The objective is to create the foundations that allow grenke to do both.

As Suzy puts it, growth needs to be disciplined.

And for grenke UK, that next stage starts by making sure the business itself is ready for the opportunities ahead.