F U E L D E L I V E RY Continued on page 46
ditioning service departments and their technicians in the field.
DM2 SOFTWARE DM2 Software has added an option for a customer service relationship (CSR) man- agement module to its software, said Tom Lane, vice president of sales. The move was made in recognition of increasing competitiveness among fuel oil dealers trying to expand, Lane said. “Our customers are trying to grow and
improve their sales approach,” Lane said, and the CSR option was created to sup- port such efforts. “Getting new business is more challeng-
ing than ever, and most of our customers look to grow by expanding the area that they cover,” Lane noted, “so they’re trying to become much more efficient in the way that they approach their sales process.” The CSR software allows fuel oil deal-
ers to capture all internal correspondence with back office departments, including service and collections departments. For example, a sales representative pre-
paring to call on an existing customer can check the CSR files to see whether there are any service issues or credit issues. “That way,” Lane said, “they’re not stepping on any land- mines—trying to upsell somebody that’s on credit hold or trying to upsell somebody that’s been having service-related problems. “It gives the sales people a more well-
rounded view of the interactions the entire company is having with the customers,” Lane said.
FIRESTREAM WORLDWIDE There are two primary reasons for fuel oil dealers to use information technology and mobile communications: one is to make office processes, such as invoicing customers and paying suppliers, more effi- cient; the other is to better manage drivers and optimize their deliveries, according to Glenn Turner, president and chief execu- tive officer of Firestream WorldWide. “When a driver is making tank wagon
deliveries, everything you can do to make those deliveries more efficient is key,” Turner said. That enhances productivity,
www.fueloilnews.com | FUEL OIL NEWS | JUNE 2011 27
which for drivers, is based on the amount of time spent at each site. Firestream Worldwide’s offering
includes a product that directly reduces the amount of time the driver spends on site by capturing all the delivery informa- tion directly from the meters.
More and more, a goal of fuel oil deal-
ers is maximizing fills, Turner continued. “It’s really not efficient to simply have a route and stop by houses based on what you think their usage might be,” he said— “or waiting for them to call. It’s much more efficient to be using a combination
