With the end of the year upon us, most men with assigned responsibilities are pressurized with two strong thoughts toward doing a better job. One by looking back over the past year and the other in looking into the next twelve months. Both are essen­tial to good fleet management. Both deserve the most rational analysis possible. Your company and management demands it and you owe it to yourself if you still have the initiative to perform for the personal benefits that accrue with good management.

To aid you in the review of these twin thoughts I hope that you have instituted the necessary record keeping during the past year to properly evaluate where you have been. Good business dictates that the important costs of conducting an assignment be accurately established; not only for analysis as a base against: the previous year but also against next year and against total corporate lines.

One of the better approaches is to utilize an out­side source to study your expenses and bookkeeping setup. This does not mean an expensive consultant but rather someone from another department in the company that might have the interest and a talented and capable mind for analysis. So often one of the strange thing that happens to all of us is that we so easily accept what we have been doing as "the best-way." One needs only to view personally, as I have, the professional fleet manager attending the fleet seminars by AMA or a good NAFA conference and learn that good money saving ideas are plentiful even for the most knowledgeable.

Once you have firmly established in your own mind that you are aware of where the costs rest for the year and then check against the previous year in proper perspective you can ideally identify the areas where   questions   arise.   These flags should signal mental reasons for marked differences and this is where yon can most help your own cause by making a report available for your management for these dif­ferences. Not only does it emphasize the fact that you personally are aware of them but your management will reward you with confidence if they are presented with the "big picture."

Where this "last year" work really pays off is in your budgeting, forecasting and planning for 1968. You now know where the weaknesses are; you know where you, can best defeat rising costs; and the cost-saving areas of expense are readily identified.

This procedure might well come out of some busi­ness management text (it didn't) but too often we are not forward thinking enough at this fiscal period to make the changes that make our position within a company command the respect that it should. Just one of the areas of possible improvement that I can visualize and recommend from my own field exposure is the basic one on the organizational level. Just where should the fleet department function be located within a corporation?

Our own audience research indicates that nearly all of the fleet managers fall within one of three gen­eral areas; with the treasurer or comptroller, in pur­chasing, or under the marketing or sales management. Few have generated the capability or confidence to answer direct to the president, the board or the exe­cutive vice president.

We could, and probably should, develop a good story surrounding the advantages and disadvantages of the fleet function falling in each of the three areas mentioned. The point is that this type of broad think­ing, with a planned presentation toward more efficient functioning can lead to a more responsible and better established fleet manager in a company if your function is should, in fact, be transferred to another de­partment. Only you are provided with the opportunity to demonstrate that such a move would be in the best interests of your company. So as New Year resol­utions become more prevalent we urge you to make them in your own business where the results can create a better year ahead for both you and your company.

Warmest regards for a happy holiday season, and good fleet management in the year ahead.