The answer to that question is, by and
large, a negative one.
To be clear: I do not mean to suggest
designers and programmers—many
of whom work remotely and operate
overseas—of intentionally producing
inferior applications that either try to do
too many things (and none of them well),
or releasing services riddled with coding
errors and no system of support.
What I do believe is that if a company
plans to create, market and attempt to
sell an application for Apple or Android
smartphones and tablets (or any other
mobile device), the people responsible
for that tool must know the home heating
industry very well.
And, whatever an application purport-
edly does— and it should do no more than
two big things with ease—users must be able
to master this resource with simplicity.
Those customers are not abstractions;
they manage family-run businesses – their
respective buyers are neighbors and mer-
chants within the community – where
there is no room for error.
Put another way, these people are not
numbers on a monochromatic display for
some spreadsheet or P&L statement; they
are men and women, friends and cowork-
ers, who need technology to enable a
driver, a local representative somewhere
in suburban Philadelphia or elsewhere
in New York's Hudson Valley, to heat a
family's home . . . without delay!
28 March 2015 | FUEL OIL NEWS | www.fueloilnews.com
BUSINESS OPERATIONS
Warmth and Light: Selecting
the right mobile device app for
the heating Oil industry
By BiLL StOmp
T
he home heating oil industry is a friend of technology.
The question, however, is: Are the software developers of
mobile devices an ally of our colleagues in the fuel business?
Bill Stomp
