Information Management
Good Choices Ahead
Fuel oil dealers are used to dealing with challenging situations:
• How do I find enough drivers?
• If I drug-test everyone, will I have enough staff?
• How can I make enough money if I keep hearing from my customers that my prices are too high?
• How do I compete with “the big guys?”
These and many more questions are often very
logical but nearly impossible to answer. In order
to compete, you need to level the playing field; in
order to win, you need to tilt the odds in your favor.
Making the change
Over the past few months, we have been focusing on
different methods to improve aspects of your business
including remote monitors as well as route optimization
processes and software. In all cases, there are
costs associated with achieving benefits, and there
is also a good deal of uncertainty. Questions such as
these can arise:
• Can I really change my Optimal Delivery?
• Will my technicians actually install monitors?
• Will I get the return on investment that I hope for?
It is always easier not to change things, especially if
the amount of work required to achieve the results
might not get done. How many times have you heard,
Sure, that’s a great idea but I’m not sure when I‘ll have
time to do it?
We all want better results, and even more so, we
want them to happen without us having to put in a lot
of effort or dramatically changing the way we operate.
The old adage good things come to those who wait
doesn’t hold water in our ever-changing, technologycharged
world. It’s more like if you snooze, you lose.
Increased profits will not happen by waiting around
and it certainly won’t happen if you don’t modify your
(an d, by extension, your staff’s) behavior.
Without rehashing all the moving pieces, you should
soon be in a position to decide whether you: like the
size of your business and want to make just a little
more money operating it, or would like to make a lot
Philip J. Baratz
Angus Energy
pbaratz@angusenergy.com
/company/angus-energy
/AngusEnergy
@AngusEnergy
more money using the same assets and resources that
you currently have.
Evolution
Change is scary, and not changing can be even scarier.
• 40 years ago, as your company (if it was
around) was transitioning from the “file room” to a
back-office accounting system, you got a lot of pushback.
Really, who wanted to type on a keyboard
when all a person had to do was to scribble a note on
a piece of paper and put it the file (after photocopying
the check that just showed up in the mail!)?
• 30 years ago, you didn’t offer anything but “a
fair price and good service.” There weren’t any pricing
programs that have now become the industry’s
biggest retention tool.
• 20 years ago, the thought of a customer going
online to make a payment—without interacting with
anyone in your company—would have made your
bookkeeper scream.
• And 10 years ago, how opposed were your
drivers and dispatchers to the notion of on-board
computers?
Industries do change, even ours, perhaps slowly.
Every industry evolves or they cease to exist. In the nottoo
distant future there will be technology “haves” and
“have nots” in our industry regarding the best method
to make deliveries (while not allowing for run-outs).
In the future, deliveries will be fewer and bigger.
Summer deliveries will be a different size than the winter
deliveries. High-K factor customers will be treated
differently than others and your fleet will not spend
nearly as much of the year sitting idly waiting for that
“cold week in January.” Most importantly, it will all
happen with the push of a button.
Old School customer care, employee training and “soft
skills” are as important today as ever. However, companies
who take those to the extreme, who say the way
they operated 20 years ago was the perfect way and
believe there is no need to take advantage of today’s
technology, might find themselves searching for their
old Hall & Oates mixed tape to comfort themselves
when the competition heats up.
Panic? Absolutely not. Plan? Absolutely. ICM
30 ICM/July/August 2019