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RETAIL OPERATIONS After demos and proposals were reviewed, the company selected an integrated solution from Summit. The company rolled out the software at corporate headquarters and in its c-stores, con- necting them over the Internet. That dispensed with the need to re-key reports from each store. Tax submissions, which used to take up a week of every month to prepare for, are now submitted electronically. Inventorying is completed monthly as opposed to quarterly. “Inventory takes a couple of hours compared to up to three days before,” said Theodorovich. “Everything works well together and it takes care of rapid price fluctuations.” GROWING TOGETHER King Oil Inc. of Indiana never had to deal with multiple systems. From its formation in 1973 with a single truck, it now consists of a couple of bulk fuel plants, a bulk propane business, close to 2,500 customers, a c-store network and 12 million gal- lons a year of petroleum delivery. Summit Software was introduced in the ‘80s. “The software does what it is supposed to do, which facilitates the sale of fuel to our customers,” said Brian King, vice president of King Oil. Over the years, he has seen the software grow in sophistication. Recently electronic data interchange (EDI) has been implemented between grocery ven- dors and King Oil c-stores, which eliminates two hours per week of administration. In addition, Summit gained approval for its reports to be trans- mitted electronically to state systems, which eradi- cated manual form entry and report mailing. The company runs its entire enterprise consist- With the unified Summit system, drivers are given precise routes and customers no longer have to worry about running out of fuel fuel transportation services as an independent dis- tributor of Chevron and Citgo petroleum products. It has 12 company owned c-stores and supplies over one hundred and fifty more in the Northern Indiana and Southwest Michigan region. The problem for Bellman Oil was that with multiple systems, inefficiency was rife. Taxes were addressed by one system while ticketing systems and c-stores ran on separate systems. Management attempted to tie it all together with spreadsheets, but that proved to be time consuming. Reporting, too, was a long and involved affair. “What finally pushed us over the edge was the state demanding electronic tax returns,” said Bellman Oil IT manager Pete Theodorovich. 24 MAY/JUNE 2011 ing of five companies, GL,AP, AR, payroll, equip- ment tracking, petroleum and propane on one unified package, including the Summit degree day system to schedule deliveries based on how cold it is. By adding laptops to its trucks, driver paperwork has been eliminated along with data reentry. The system also provides a means of safeguard- ing company data in the event of a disaster through Summit’s disaster recovery services. “When a fire destroyed our office last year, Summit arranged for our data to be backed up onto its own system and we were operating again by the next day,” said King. George Olney, COO, Summit Software, an iRely company specializing in unified software accounting systems, at 4242 Flagstaff Cove, Fort Wayne, IN 46815, 260-486-4357, www.summit-soft.com NPN Magazine n www.npnweb.com