Ken Trinder, head of business development at Epyx, offers his view of the year ahead.

“If 2009 was the year in which many fleets got serious about adopting effective cost control measures after a decade of HR-driven fleet policies, then 2010 will be the year that they start to reap the rewards in terms of savings – and then continue to look for more.

“The fact is that many fleets had outsourced so many operations that they had lost the managerial skills needed to really pare back costs while maintaining operational efficiency but the recession has delivered a crash course in regaining them and, perhaps more importantly, created a mindset in which cost control is king.

“Perhaps the most interesting question of the moment is that, having taken a grip in some of the obvious operational areas by, for example, extending replacement cycles and improving maintenance management, where will fleets look next when it comes to taking control of costs?

“One area to watch, we think, could be new car acquisition. While the new fleet market is historically low, there are signs of a gradual pick up – in November, we recorded the strongest day for more than a year on our 1link Vehicle Network vehicle acquisition e-commerce platform. Fleets are slowly returning to the new car market and it will be interesting to see which cars they choose and how they acquire them.

“It could be that in the future we will look back at 2009 as the year when fleets became better at operating vehicles and 2010 as the year when they got good at buying them.”

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