TCOPlus has been developed by FleetVision founder, Hans Damen, and Bart Vanham, founder and managing director of Fleet & Driver Care.

It works by accurately measuring the organisation's fleet carbon footprint on a country-by-country basis. Once an accurate benchmark has been achieved for each individual country, the solution then allows the international fleet manager to input a series of "what if" scenarios to show the total cost savings in carbon emissions, taxation and fuel costs that can be achieved across the fleet if the fleet policy is changed and more fuel and tax-efficient vehicles are selected.

Bart Vanham explained: 'TCOPlus enables an international fleet manager to refute any national arguments that it is too difficult to measure carbon footprint, reduce taxation and cut fuel spend. It cuts easily through the corporate firewall that some countries, through vested interests of whatever kind, build around themselves.'

TCOPlus is already said to be helping major fleets in the oil, food and services industry to generate significant savings, giving a return on investment of between 40 and 60 times their original spend.

Mr Vanham added: 'A typical 8.5% saving on corporate taxation and fuel costs is just the starting point for the level of savings we can create for major fleet operators with users regularly achieving savings of 15-20%, and we already have the evidence to back us up.'

Once the system has made a detailed evaluation on a country-by-country basis, a secure website can then be used by the fleet manger to model a series of different scenarios to find the most cost and tax-effective fleet policy for the fleet overall. Key measurements are carbon footprint, fuel budget, and car taxation both corporate and personal, such as Benefit-in-Kind taxation. This is produced for each country and is consolidated on a European level.

'Our tool will render instant results on both a country and a consolidated European level for the strategies set. Once a presentation is made to the board with suggested savings that could be achieved, any adjustments requested by board level sponsors can be accommodated through instant recalculations to show the impact of each decision made, ' explained Mr Damen.

It can also be used to build a pan-European fleet policy based on the selection of the most fuel and tax-efficient vehicles identified in the initial analysis stage.