There are five main 1link platforms – covering vehicle acquisition, service and maintenance, short term hire, relicensing and vehicle disposal – used to create fast, accurate and low cost online processes between fleets and both their suppliers and customers.

In total, the 1link platforms are used in the management of around 2.5 million vehicles. Historically, these have been dominated by company cars but the emergence of the Transit as the most common vehicle found on these systems shows that penetration is rapidly increasing among commercial vehicle fleet users.

Ken Trinder, head of business development at epyx, the company behind 1link, said: “Interest from commercial vehicle fleets in what our e-commerce platforms can do for them has been growing for some time but the recession has really accelerated the trend.

“What our products do, in a nutshell, is to take a standard fleet process such as disposal and make it faster and cheaper while offering higher levels of control. In tough times, these advantages have obvious appeal and the cost of adoption is very low.”

At present, the 1link platforms are designed to work only with sub-3.5 tonne commercial vehicles but this may change.

Trinder added: “This is something that we have under review. It would be difficult purely because of the breadth of models in the large commercial vehicle market but there is certainly a demand.”