ESG & Industry Updates

Better Data Drives Better Results on Fuel Inventory Management

Posted by Ed Burke on Sep 23, 2015 12:03:45 PM

 

Technician installing a tank meter 

There have been so many technology advances in the past 10-15 years that have helped streamline industry operations immeasurably. From cloud based CRMs, to updated financial systems, to e-logs, to TABs interfaces, so much of the background work that used to take hours of manpower and resources now runs automatically, or at least semi-automatically. 

Perhaps the best win-win tech advancement however, in terms of streamlining and simplifying an issue for both the company and the customer, is the ability to use cell technology for remote tank monitoring. For dispatch, theres no more guesswork but automated alerts, continuous level monitoring, and the ability to easily report on and plan for customer usage patterns. For the customer, there's no more sticking the tank, no more calling in orders, and no more running out of fuel.

What's better than that?

There are a lot of different systems for tank monitoring, and lots of questions about it. So, this month I wrote an article for the September issue of Oil & Energy Magazine on how we use specific remote tank monitoring setups to streamline our customers fuel inventory management as well as our dispatch operations.  

You can read the full article here: "Better Tank Data Drives Better Fuel Management" 

 Any questions, feel free to give us a shout. 

 

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Topics: remote tank monitoring, fuel management

Solving for the Customer with Remote Wireless Fuel Tank Monitoring

Posted by Ed Burke on Aug 29, 2013 12:25:00 PM

In a world of ever appearing new technology the promises the world for your business, how do you decide what options justify the intense time and money investments? For us it comes down to a single two-part question, “Does this streamline our operations for our business and make our employees jobs better and more efficient?” And more importantly: “How does this enhance our customers’ experience?”

One of the technologies we’ve adapted over the past few years that delivers on both these criteria is wireless remote tank monitoring. If you’re unfamiliar, these are essentially small wireless transmitters that are installed on a fuel tank and push notifications on fuel levels periodically. The notifications go to a secure, cloud based platform.

This has been fantastic for both our dispatchers and drivers. Dispatchers are able to see levels on monitored customers’ tanks, so they are able to plan delivery routes out further and they are able to maximize delivery gallons as well (a 75% fill over a time based automatic that would typically be around 50%).  This makes drivers more efficient, and delivering more gallons in less time allows us to keep costs and therefore prices down. The monitoring also helps our customer service department by reducing the number of same-day urgent run out calls.

Certain industries have wide swings in product usage depending on different factors – a particularly busy marina weekend, an unexpected snow storm for a DPW, an unusually cold weekend, or a power outage kicking on your generator… I’ve been in the dispatch and driver seat on these kind of urgent calls and its extremely stressful – I don’t doubt its infinitely more so for the customer, and for a lot of people, being remotely monitored essentially takes this entire scenario off the table.  That allows you to focus on your business and your customers, rather than sticking a tank, calculating your usage, etc.

I wrote an article for Oil & Energy Magazine on wireless remote tank monitoring that gets a little more into the details, if you would like, you can read it here: Oil & Energy Magazine Online. If you’d like more info on our remote tank monitoring and other inventory controls, you can click HERE , or shoot us a comment or email.

Are any of you on remote monitoring currently? How has it helped (or not helped) your operations? 


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Topics: Marinas, customer service, remote tank monitoring

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