The home heating oil industry has a long and proud history, and Fuel Oil News has been there supporting it since 1935. It is an industry that has faced many challenges during that time. In its 77th year, Fuel Oil News is doing more than just holding
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M astering a new dispatch and mobile communi- cations system may be a little bit like learning a new language, especially if it is part of a new "enterprise-wide" package. Employees of Blueox Energy in Oxford, N.Y., started using a new sys- tem in August 2014, and now six drivers, six technicians and 17 office staff work with the system, Julia Miller, business develop- ment manager, said via email. Employees needed only one to two months to "be functional" with it while continuing to learn its finer points. Implementing a new software system is not a "plug and play" task, Miller noted. "I think that is the biggest misconception," she said, describing a general tendency in business to identify a need, buy software to address that need, and then assume prob- lems "go away and efficiencies start rolling in." The reality is rather different, she said. "You really have to take a deeper look at your internal processes and procedures and develop an understanding of how the software is intended to be used," Miller said. Employees often have ingrained work practices associated with the software that is being phased out, she noted. As well, there may be "workarounds" connected with the old system that have become habits. "In the past we did things a certain way and circumvented our previous software system," Miller said. "This created outside systems, which in turn reduces any potential efficiencies" that a system might have been expected to yield. Some providers issue an updated version of their offering on an annual basis, plus smaller enhancements during the course of a year. For readers of Fuel Oil News, software providers high- lighted selected features and enhancements that have come out recently or are due out soon. ADD SYSTEMS Energy consumers' preferences are changing, and in turn driving changes in the way fuel oil marketers use their technology, said John Redmond, vice president of strategic product direction for ADD Systems, Flanders, N.J. The company markets ADD Energy E3, an enterprise, or "back-office" product; Raven, a mobile computing product for managing fuel deliveries; and Pegasus, a mobile solution for managing service personnel and activi- ties. Last year the company released a Pegasus application for Windows 8 tablets. Being able to use the software on tablets, with their larger screens, makes it more convenient for service technicians, Redmond said. The fuel oil business has long been an automatic deliv- ery business, where marketers forecasted when consum- ers were due for delivery, Redmond noted. But as the price of petroleum products started to go up, more and more consumers wanted to control the size of the deliv- ery. As a result, ADD Systems is seeing more fuel oil mar- keters opting for wireless deployment of Raven deliv- ery software because it helps them serve will-call custom- ers more efficiently. Meeting the demands of will-call consumers puts a premium on knowing where trucks are in real time, according to Redmond. That knowledge is "more valuable today than it was say five years ago," he said. Of deployments of Raven software in the last two years, 70% were wireless, Redmond estimated. He contrasted that to deployments three and more years ago, when, he estimated, 30 to 40% were wireless. (If not transmitted wirelessly from the road, data captured on the Raven system can be uploaded to ADD Energy E3, the back office system, via local Wi-Fi or by placing the mobile device into a docking station that is connected to E3.) Implementing wireless mobile computing is an expense, Redmond added. Companies "wouldn't be doing that unless they had a business need to do it. I think the business need is this change in the marketplace"—where customers are saying they want to decide when they get a delivery. The trend toward will-call has made routing more of a prior- ity, too. Routing software has been around for years, Redmond noted, "but there's been a major uptick in the number of com- panies that are trying to plan the most efficient route for every driver every day." While that's in good part because fuel mar- 30 JUNE 2015 | FUEL OIL NEWS | www.fueloilnews.com BUSINESS OPERATIONS Dispatch & Communications Trends Some software suppliers now issue smaller, more frequent system updates BY STEPHEN BENNETT