Digitalisation of fleet services sparks interest in cross-platform strategies

Coronavirus has increased interest in the digitalisation of fleet services, which Epyx says is leading to more fleets to investigate “joined-up” cross-platform strategies.

Debbie Fox, commercial director at the motor industry e-commerce specialist Epyx, says she 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.

“What probably hasn’t been discussed as much,” she explained, “has been something that we are definitely hearing in our conversations with new and existing customers, that there 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.

“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.

“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.”
Offering platforms that manage service, maintenance and repair (SMR), vehicle procurement, short term rental, and vehicle remarketing, Epyx has seen this trend developing in the market.

“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,” said Fox.

“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.”