“It’s been widely reported that the last year has seen much increased interest in digitalisation of fleet activities, as more people are working remotely and there is a greater demand for services that can be accessed online,” said commercial director, Debbie Fox (pictured above).

“What probably hasn’t been discussed as much… is an increasing awareness of what can be achieved through thinking about digitalisation in a joined-up, cross-platform sense, rather than it running in parallel lanes.”

Fox claimed fleets had previously viewed software something to fulfil a specific task but, recently, more operators were considering its potential to address wider areas of a business.

“For a long time, technological solutions were often siloed in the minds of fleets. They wanted something that made a process better or solved a problem,” she said.

“Perhaps if they were thinking bigger, they wanted to make improvements in an entire area of activity. While that situation has probably been changing for some time, the pandemic has added momentum.”

Fox added that fleets using the company’s 1link Service Network SMR system in conjunction with its other platforms had been able to introduce new elements to their operations.

“Those that have also adopted our 1link Disposal Network remarketing platform, for example, are able to use the service record as part of the vehicle description when the vehicle is remarketed.

“Similarly, those that use 1link Service Network alongside the 1link Hire Network daily rental platform are able to much more easily co-ordinate when vehicles will be off-road because of SMR actions and provide replacements from daily rental providers.

“These are fairly basic examples and there are many kinds of cross-platform efficiencies of this kind available through digitalisation. We expect this to develop into the beginnings of a major trend during 2021.”