If you’ve been in the commercial fuel industry for any length of time, fluctuations in supply and demand aren’t a new development. However, the scope and frequency of these fluctuations have increased during the last decade.

In just the last few years, we’ve seen how a global pandemic can impact demand almost overnight. We’ve also witnessed how a cyberattack on a key element of the fuel supply chain can disrupt operations in an entire region of the US. In turn, we’ve also seen how quickly demand can spike, such as during the Colonial Pipeline shutdown or as soon as the pandemic lockdowns were lifted.

The main takeaway is that both the demand for fuel and the available fuel supply can fluctuate faster than ever before. Unfortunately, you can’t control these types of macro-economic factors and market disruptions. So, how do you maintain a profitable fuel operation in such a dynamic marketplace?

Your ongoing success depends on being more agile than your competition. When everyone else is scrambling to overcome these market challenges, make sure you focus on the factors that you can control. Your ability to navigate these fluctuations will go a long way in determining whether your business leads or follows.

Optimize Fuel Pricing

In an environment full of variables, one constant you can control is how you price your fuel. Optimizing your fuel pricing process is critical in an industry that’s prone to so many fluctuations—whether they stem from a natural disaster, a cyberattack on the supply chain, or even a labor shortage. By optimizing fuel pricing, you can help ensure your business remains profitable under a wide range of scenarios.

Digital fuel pricing solutions are great for replacing legacy manual processes and eliminating multiple steps to increase both speed and efficiency. For instance, at the start of the pandemic, many operators quickly realized they needed digital tools to centralize supply points and synchronize dispatch teams across multiple locations. The old standard of relying on “gut feelings” and manual processes was no longer viable. That also holds true for pricing.

Modern B2B fuel pricing solutions that leverage Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) make it much easier to have repeatable processes that work across multiple scenarios. In this way, AI, ML, and automation can deliver the on-demand insights you need in the fast-paced world of fuel pricing. These tools can also help you capture and extend deep institutional knowledge—freeing up your experts while making new employees productive much faster.

Protect Margin in Every Transaction

The right fuel pricing solution can help you stay profitable by preventing margin leakage at all points in the supply chain where you buy and sell fuel. The question is, how do you realize margin opportunity throughout the commercial fuel lifecycle?

Depending on the scale of your business and the size of your marketplace, even tiny fractions of pennies can make an enormous impact when you multiply them across the full volume of your business. Although those fractions might initially seem meaningless, they can quickly add up to a huge business opportunity.

By better understanding your entire supply chain, you can more easily determine the best way to maximize your revenue. For example, you can use automation to make real-time pricing decisions that maximize your margins and ensure that your fuel is priced lower than your competitors—but still generating a worthwhile profit.

If you think about the commercial fuel lifecycle, there are all kinds of opportunities for profit. If you’re an International Oil Company (IOC) or state-backed National Oil Company (NOC), you might sell fuel to branded or unbranded dealers, including Company Owned Company Operated (COCO) retail outlets. Or you might also sell into the commercial and industrial markets.

If you’re an independent refiner, you might sell into the general marketplace, which includes distributors, jobbers, traders, and wholesalers. The next step in the lifecycle might be commercial and industrial markets, the commercial aviation market, and a wide range of retail entities.

Accelerate Your Digital Transformation Today

Regardless of where your business operates within the commercial fuel lifecycle, there are multiple points where you buy and sell fuel. Each of those transactions represents a clear opportunity to make money.

But you first need a modern, flexible fuel pricing solution that helps you remain profitable regardless of broader market variables. In an increasingly competitive marketplace, your ability to adapt and innovate with new technologies will help set up your business for continued success no matter what the future holds.

The fuel industry is anything but predictable. Yes, it’s often complex and volatile, but you can’t say it’s ever boring. One reason it’s so unpredictable and complicated is the large number of interwoven parts of the fuel supply chain—from refiners to retailers.

Part of that complexity stems from a lack of integrated platforms as well as companies that are on vastly different stages in their digital transformation. For instance, the COVID pandemic quickly revealed the fragility of these supply chain connections and dependencies.

In spring 2020, gasoline demand was down nearly 50% compared to the previous year—the lowest consumption in decades. Meanwhile, convenience retailers were enjoying record-high fuel margins. In the first quarter of 2020, margins averaged 10 cents per gallon higher than the full year of 2019. Unfortunately, petroleum wholesalers weren’t as fortunate as people stayed home and demand quickly plummeted. At that point fuel prices got simultaneously hit by both the lingering impacts of the pandemic and an oil price war.

When you can’t easily predict what’s coming next in a fluctuating market, the best strategy is to make your business as adaptable as possible. Here are three good ways to control what you can in terms of optimizing your fuel supply operations:

1. Control your inventory
2. Streamline your bill-of-lading (BOL) process
3. Automate credit management

Control Your Inventory

Maintaining inventory is probably one of the most significant contributors to daily operating expenses for petroleum marketers. So, try to control your inventory to avoid costly retains and runouts. A sophisticated inventory management solution can deliver accurate insight into your inventory levels, down to the smallest detail—whether you’re managing a bulk plant or operating a warehouse with lubricants and other petroleum-based packaged goods.

Either way, it’s smart to refine your process of balancing between over- and under-stocking, especially during periods of fluctuating demand. And while predicting demand isn’t an exact science, basing your inventory decisions on historical data or unique factors in your area can help produce accurate forecasts to prevent inventory excesses or shortages.

Streamline Your BOL Process

Many businesses discover that automating the fuel supply chain tends to be a complex undertaking. In fact, the process of providing an accurate BOL and invoice used to take days or weeks, especially for fuel suppliers that relied on paper-based mail delivery. Even in the age of automation, some suppliers are still delivering bills of lading and processing invoices. And that’s where the complexity and challenges lie. Here’s why.

The BOL is one of the most critical documents in a fuel supplier’s workstream. It contains vital information about what, how much, and to whom the product was delivered. It’s the foundation for the invoice that follows. If any crucial details are incorrect as a result of manual processes, that not only delays your time-to-cash but opens up the possibility of creating such a horrible service experience that your customers start considering other suppliers.

The way you avoid that is to go digital and automate as much of your process as possible, making it easier for your customers to integrate with their own systems.

Automate Credit Management

Proper credit management and collection is critical for all fuel suppliers. However, it’s even more important during periods of declining sales and low-profit margins. At that point, fractions of pennies matter. It’s not unusual for large suppliers with multiple business lines and thousands of customer accounts to see multi-million-dollar fluctuations from week to week. A good management solution provides the essential tools to monitor your accounts and automate the credit management process.

For example, if a customer exceeds their credit limit, it typically means they’re not consistently paying their invoices on time. In this case, the automated system should enact a hold on their credit that prevents them from placing an order until the matter is resolved. Many of today’s solutions can support this, and they can also send rules-triggered customer communications before a bill is due or when an account is overdue by a certain number of days.

Go Digital to Mitigate Market Fluctuations

If you’re human, you can’t help but feel uncomfortable during periods of lower sales and tighter margins. But you now have good options for controlling what you can. The more efficient you can make your operations, the more prepared you’ll be to remain profitable despite fluctuating market conditions.

Stay prepared for the next big event with PDI logistics management solutions.

How many times a day do you see an ad? Social media, websites, magazines, radio, billboards, signage at stores—the list of exposure opportunities is virtually endless. Research firm Yankelovich estimates that the average person sees up to 5,000 or more ads each day. This has led to consumers disregarding ads more than ever before, making it harder for marketers to get in front of, and actually recognized by, their target markets.

That’s especially the case with c-store shoppers, who represent a true melting pot of consumers. They range from commuting office workers picking up their morning coffee to parents and their kids grabbing an after-school snack, along with third-shift employees making a late-night run and every walk of life between. With such a diverse audience, how do consumer packaged goods (CPG) brands optimize their marketing efforts to reach the right people?

Loyalty Programs as a Catalyst

Loyalty programs have evolved beyond the historical practice of completing a punch card to earn a free purchase. Today’s programs are deeply involved, strategized, and activated through digital channels with loyalty apps, texts, emails, and other avenues of engagement. Better yet, more and more consumers are becoming members of fuel and/or convenience retail loyalty programs, like the PDI Fuel Rewards® program.

The biggest value that comes from loyalty programs for marketers is the captive audience. Consumers who download an app, register for a program, and provide their information have already shown an invested interest in a specific retailer or network of retailers. Apps like GasBuddy allow consumers to shop by price while other programs focus on a specific fuel or retail brand. Either way, the audience has raised their digital hand and said, “Yes. I’d like to stay up to date with this.” For marketers searching for their target audience, these consumers are saying, “I’m right here.”

Reaching the Masses

Fuel and convenience retail loyalty programs are the sweet spot for reaching this melting pot of c-store shoppers. But with hundreds of chains and tens of thousands of independent operators in the US market, how do you get the most reach for your effort? Start with PDI Offer Network.

PDI has long been a partner to the convenience retail industry, working with everyone from large chains and fuel brands down to independent and single-store operators. We’re in a unique position to partner with tens of thousands of retailers and millions of consumers, helping you target c-store shoppers and drive your marketing goals forward.

But what if your product isn’t for everyone? One struggle that some brands face is legal restrictions to marketing their product. For instance, tobacco and alcohol products are subject to laws that limit your ability to promote offers without first ensuring that the audience is age-appropriate. PDI helps you confirm that age-restricted products are marketed only after age verification has occurred, allowing you to confidently promote products without the concern of overstepping a regulatory boundary.

Measuring Your Efforts

The other major struggle that brands face these days is measuring and understanding the effectiveness of their efforts. Data lives in disparate systems and a holistic view requires manual effort with spreadsheets and calculations. As a result, someone on your team ultimately has to understand the meaning behind the numbers to extract tangible insights from the data.

ROMI is today’s go-to measurement for understanding the value of your efforts and the impact they have. But, in order to effectively measure ROMI, you have to start with a goal. Are you trying to reach new consumers? Test a new flavor or product? Increase distribution? The end goal is really the start of your marketing optimization process and the key to making sure that once you find the right audience, your efforts will deliver the right results.

An Extension of Your Marketing Team

With over 35 years of experience in the convenience retail and petroleum market, PDI has been a trusted partner of many retailers where your target consumers are already shopping. PDI Offer Network has partnered with retailers across the nation to help CPG brands like yours get the most out of their marketing efforts.

You get the simplicity of having a single point of contact to reach millions of consumers with offers that expand your reach, engagement, and lift. You also get access to industry experts who not only help you design strategic offers, but also measure the impact of those offers.

PDI Offer Network is essentially an extension of your marketing team’s efforts all the way from strategic planning to evaluating your results. National, regional, and retailer-specific offer campaigns each have different strategies behind them, as well as the type of offer. By utilizing the multitude of loyalty programs inside PDI Offer Network, your brand gains exposure to millions of consumers.

Beyond traditional in-store signage (which we also do), which requires the consumer to already be onsite, these offers are pushed directly through mobile apps, emails, and text messages. Enticing consumers before they even make a trip, or while they’re outside filling up the gas tank, helps cut through the clutter of distraction and creates a more dedicated focus to their trip.

When your offer campaign is complete, measuring ROMI is more than just understanding the results. It’s also about comparing against pre-campaign numbers, as well as seeing how the offer made an impact post-campaign. Issuance reporting includes how many times an offer is issued to a consumer, how many sites are issuing that particular offer, and how effective the overall campaign has been in accomplishing your marketing initiatives—from lifts in sales to increased distribution both during and after the campaign.

CPG and PDI Relationship

CPGs no longer need to operate in a silo and fight for exposure to c-store consumers. With PDI Offer Network, you can partner with solution providers and retailers to drive greater value to consumers. You can not only reach your target audience but directly engage with them in a much more impactful manner that can transform your marketing efforts and results.

Learn more about PDI Offer Network at https://www.pditechnologies.com/offer-network/.

Improving inventory management is just one of the ingredients for reducing waste and increasing profitability in your c-store. With the introduction of new technologies, improved data collection, and integrated systems, foodservice managers can forecast, plan, and manage foodservice production better than ever before. If you’re looking to upgrade your foodservice program, make sure to incorporate these five stages of foodservice operations into your day-to-day operations:

1. Make the Right Amount (Inventory Management)

A good foodservice program uses predictive analytics to let store-level staff know when to make something and how many to make. It should also monitor the “health” of your prepared food, letting employees know when it’s time to throw something away or if an item is the right temperature. Waste management and inventory management work together to ensure you maintain balanced inventory levels and reduce excessive waste. In addition, a sophisticated inventory management tool will allow you to accurately track inventory for menu items that require multiple ingredients (such as hamburgers).

Managing foodservice inventory is complicated both by the complexity of relationships inside the preparation process and by the simple challenge that most of it isn’t barcoded. By gaining visibility into demand, you can accurately forecast these items based on historical market-basket data from your customers.

Ultimately, your goal should be to achieve the ease, simplicity, and visibility of merchandise inventory management in your foodservice program.

2. Time It Right and Increase Freshness (Production Planning)

Making the right amount of food at the right times means you can serve up what people want—when they want it. That can increase your sales, and it also can reduce waste.

It starts with knowing what you’re going to sell and when. Understanding the nature of specific food items and mapping tasks is essential to maintaining quality. If fresh is a brand attribute for your company, a sophisticated production planning application will help you live up to that promise.

Smart production planning means you’ll never disappoint, and you’ll always delight, but it all depends on accurate forecasts.

3. Know What to Make and When (Job Scheduling)

Knowing what to make and when to make it simplifies your job, but no one wants to manage a job calendar. When you use technology with intelligent scheduling based on business rules and food production criteria, it’s less work for you to ensure that production is spread throughout the day, providing the freshest products to your customers.

This eliminates the manual process of outlining every task individually.

Time-of-day forecasting and automated job scheduling provide simple but enhanced task management for your employees. The software does the work for you so your store employees will know when to make breakfast burritos at specific times and prepare the right amount to satisfy hungry customers.

Additionally, smart job scheduling and the right technology can help you avoid unsavory experiences. It’s hard to forget a bad experience, like taking a bite of a warm breakfast sandwich only to taste a crunchy, overcooked piece of sausage. Or seeing that corner of melted cheese that’s turned bright orange because it’s stale.

4. Monitor Seasonality and Align with Promotions/Offers (Sales Forecasting)

Nearly 30% of daily c-store foodservice orders are made up of baked goods. Using advanced data analysis of market-basket transactions, you can predict what popular breakfast items and baked snacks will sell by store and time of day. However, establishing clear baseline forecasts by time of day isn’t enough. You must anticipate seasonal changes that impact demand or timing. When you’re pushing a new promotion, you need to be prepared to keep up with demand.

By combining market-basket sales forecasting with job scheduling, you can serve up a great customer experience consistently every time.

You can also do some exciting and impactful things in your foodservice operations when you have technology making sense of all the data your ERP solution is producing and capturing.

5. Deliver Tailored and Tasty Culinary Experiences (Customer Experience)

Keeping up with the latest consumer trends is critical to building a successful foodservice program. These programs can and should be tweaked by region. For example, tacos may not fare as well as hoagie sandwiches in some US locations. Knowing the demographics and taste preferences of the population in your area will help you tailor your food offerings to meet the needs of local consumers.

However, knowing your audience shouldn’t prevent you from taking risks and introducing new items or flavors into your foodservice program. The ubiquity of the Internet and social media have made the world a much smaller place, and consumers increasingly expect to enjoy diverse food experiences at their local convenience store.

Foodservice is not just the future—it’s now. Convenience retailers who wish to capitalize on this trend should learn from others who are doing it well and invest in the tools to deliver exceptionally tailored and tasty culinary experiences to their customers.

Take the First Step Today

Foodservice is complicated, but with the right technology partner, it doesn’t have to feel that way. Fine-tune your foodservice program by following these five stages to deliver a great customer experience that reduces waste, increases profitability in your c-store, and produces the margins you need to thrive.

Are you ready to freshen up your foodservice? Learn more about PDI Foodservice solutions and see how we can help you transform your business.

When you consider the core challenges facing fuel wholesalers—rising labor costs and industry consolidation, along with fluctuating fuel demand and pricing—it’s clear they’re operating in an increasingly competitive environment with razor-thin profit margins.

Although the industry was never built to move at the same speed as large retailers such as Amazon and Walmart, it’s important to understand how these giants have redefined customer experience, efficiency, and expectation levels for all types of enterprises. The key to their success has been an ability to reimagine their business strategy—and a willingness to change.

When you realize that change is inevitable, the question becomes whether you’ll be distancing yourself from the competition, or vice versa. That question is particularly relevant to fuel wholesalers in an extremely important area: digital transformation.

It’s clear the industry is picking up the pace toward digitization, and if you’re not accelerating your own efforts, you risk getting left behind. Unfortunately, a continued reliance on legacy IT systems is perhaps the biggest factor inhibiting digital transformation for many businesses. Just like you shouldn’t build a new house on a crumbling foundation, you can’t build your digital strategy on an aging technology infrastructure.

If you’ve been hesitant to ramp up your digital transformation efforts, you need to ask yourself:

• Does your current technology infrastructure help you reduce friction while delivering end-to-end business visibility?
• Does your staff have the right tools to maximize their productivity, or are they wasting time on mundane tasks that could otherwise be automated?
• Are your IT processes delivering maximum business value at the least possible cost?

Making a Strong Case for Digital Transformation

Your ability to leverage technology, people, and processes can fundamentally change your business results—and sometimes all it takes is a willingness to adapt. If you think about the technology obstacles inhibiting modernization, they usually come down to:

• Information silos and a lack of shared resources
• Disparate IT systems that don’t work well together
• Manual, resource-intensive processes
• Legacy technology that won’t scale with your business

Combine any of those elements, and you’re suddenly stuck with far too much complexity, unnecessary risk exposure, and limited transparency across your enterprise. In turn, that can make your business technically obsolete, less competitive, and slower in managing market disruptions. Meanwhile, your competitors who have already begun to modernize can operate leaner (reducing costs) while moving faster (quickly adapting to new technologies and trends).

By embracing a digital-first approach, you can eliminate many of these technology barriers and optimize your operating efficiency. After all, if there’s one fundamental lesson from the COVID-19 pandemic, it was the fact that digitized businesses are much more agile in adapting to changing market conditions.

Improving Transparency, Efficiency, and Agility

The ability to operate with greater agility across a digitally connected supply chain is critical to your long-term success. This is where a modern, cloud-based technology infrastructure can pay major dividends. Cloud solutions provide highly flexible models (private, public, or hybrid) that leverage the latest technologies and help you connect seamlessly with vendors, partners, and customers alike.

In addition, simpler integrated solutions help eliminate the hodgepodge of IT systems and the management complexity they create. When implemented correctly, a comprehensive digitalization strategy also reduces friction while improving operational transparency and helping you manage the unexpected. Moreover, it supports a more sustainable business model in terms of flexibility, security, and reliability across your entire supply chain.

A strong digital foundation also positions you for the next wave of innovation, including AI, machine learning, and robotics. With 5G on the horizon, you can also expect to see enormous growth in IoT devices with next-generation connectivity. Being able to easily connect your systems with all those new devices (and their data) can lead to better decision-making as you turn raw data into profitable, real-time insights.

Maximizing the Payoff of Digital Transformation

The more you can accelerate your digital transformation timeline, the sooner you can begin to leverage the types of modern technologies and applications that deliver immediate and measurable results. One of the fastest ways to realize gains is to pair your digital transformation with end-to-end ERP solutions designed specifically for fuel wholesalers.

Tapping into sophisticated capabilities is a great way to maximize efficiency. Integrating ERP and fuel pricing solutions that utilize machine learning can also help you focus on maximizing profitability and identifying new market opportunities.

These robust, secure, and scalable solutions can help you attract new customers, keep existing ones satisfied, boost engagement, and ultimately drive higher revenue. Best of all, you can implement them on your own terms, determining the pace that best matches your unique business requirements—and aligning step by step with your digital transformation.

Profitability and the ability to compete in the oil and gas industry is largely determined by the efficiency of your business operations. The last few years have seen more change and market disruption than normal, making productivity a priority.

Petroleum marketers, jobbers, commercial and industrial distributors, and bulk lubricant suppliers all have common goals: drive costs down, improve customer satisfaction, and produce bottom-line growth. You can start by following these seven tips, leveraging digital technologies to optimize your business.

1. Get Accurate Insight into Inventory

On-hand inventory is likely one of the biggest contributors to daily operating expenses for petroleum marketers. So control it. A sophisticated inventory management solution provides accurate insight into your inventory levels down to the smallest detail. Whether you’re managing bulk plant product or operating a warehouse with lubricants and other petroleum-based packaged goods, it’s imperative to maintain a delicate balance between over- and under-stocking, especially during periods of fluctuating demand.

And while predicting demand isn’t an exact science, basing your inventory decisions on historical data or other contributing factors (such as special events in your area) can go a long way in helping produce accurate forecasts that prevent inventory excesses or shortages. Taking advantage of machine learning and algorithms based on industry best practices to predict volume and margin values can be a game-changer in the wholesale fuel industry, giving pricing managers more time to focus on their strategies to deliver incremental value rather than on the arduous pricing process itself.

2. Streamline Invoicing with BOL Automation

It’s true that automating the fuel supply chain has been a lengthy, uphill climb. It wasn’t long ago that providing an accurate bill of lading (BOL) and invoice took days or weeks, especially for fuel suppliers who delivered them via snail mail. The industry has come a long way since then, but even in the age of automation, it’s not unusual to find suppliers still producing manual, paper reports when it comes to delivering BOLs and processing invoices.

Here’s why that matters: the BOL is one of the most important documents in a fuel supplier’s day. Among other things, it contains critical information about what, how much, and to whom product was delivered. It essentially serves as the foundation for the invoice that follows. If you repeatedly get crucial details wrong as a result of manual processes, not only do you delay invoice payment, but you also risk creating such a horrible service experience that your customers might begin considering other suppliers.

3. Optimize Your Business with Credit Management

Properly managing credit and collections is a big deal for any fuel supplier, but it becomes even more important when sales are declining and margins are low. At that point, every penny counts. For large suppliers with multiple business lines and thousands of customer accounts, it isn’t unusual to see multi-million-dollar fluctuations on the books from week to week. A good solution provides essential tools to easily monitor your accounts and automate the credit management process.

For example, if a customer exceeds their credit limit, it generally means they’re not consistently paying their invoices in a timely manner. In this case, the system should automatically enact a hold on their credit that prevents them from placing an order until the matter is resolved. Many of today’s solutions are also capable of sending out rules-triggered customer communications before a bill is due or when an account is overdue by a specified number of days.

4. Reduce Wasted Cycles with Software Integration

Software integration, where separate systems are combined into a single, more extensive system, can accommodate ongoing requirements as your business evolves. Whether you’re a bulk supplier or a mid-market seller, undergoing consolidation or trying to scale up your business, third-party integration is essential to modernizing your business. It’s also essential to your ability to compete, transforming a collection of disjointed manual processes into a streamlined, transparent, and efficient ecosystem. Look for a solution that offers powerful third-party integration with the most common tools you encounter in your business so that your business can run at full capacity.

5. Manage by Exception for Increased Productivity and Reduced Risk

Without a sophisticated monitoring system in place, mountains of raw data from thousands of daily transactions make it difficult to spot irregularities within a reasonable timeframe, and almost impossible to manage by exception. Look for a solution that allows you to set notifications for deviations from the norm in margins, payment or transportation timelines, and other processes, or for unexpected events. In that way, you can avoid spending time managing repetitive, day-to-day operations and focus instead on growing your business and improving the customer experience.

Automation also allows better planning for unexpected challenges. For example, if you receive notification of a terminal outage, software that can let you make a change to many orders at one time can help offset some of the issues that arise during the outage. Compare this to the old way of doing things, where manual processes made it more difficult to detect and quickly react to exceptions or unexpected events. A reliable monitoring solution lets you to do more without additional overhead, allowing you to focus your attention on critical issues and freeing you to spend time where it matters most: on your customers.

6. Prioritize Customer Service for a Competitive Edge

Competition among suppliers is strong, and innovative customer service is crucial to retaining customers and keeping them happy. Improving efficiency and transparency, from ordering to transit to invoicing, improves your customer relationships as it reduces errors and administrative costs.

However, responsive customer service goes beyond prevention of problems on your end. In an industry with historically little customer loyalty, a responsive interface that allows a certain degree of customer self-service can help give you a competitive edge. A good system allows the customer to place and view orders, update payment information, and view electronic documentation for every step of the transaction, resulting in a massive decrease in paperwork—and potential errors and delays.

7. Invest in a Holistic Approach for Operational Flexibility

When you need to manage your retail operations, wholesale business, logistics, cardlock business, consignment operation, or any number of tasks, never overlook the power of an end-to-end solution. The industry is always changing, whether through market consolidation, customer demand, or price and supply fluctuations. It’s important to set your business up for success with the right tools in order to keep up with the industry and to grow your business. With uniform visibility into operations and the ability to react in real-time, gaining insight is well within the reach of your business.

To explore more ways to optimize your operations, visit https://pditechnologies.com/petroleum-wholesale/streamline-operations/

When industry consolidation and competition heat up, it’s time to seek out new ways of making your business more efficient and cost-effective. One of the fastest ways to achieve that is to give your employees new tools that boost their productivity. By going digital, you can free them up to work more efficiently. In turn, that will help you reduce costs by streamlining your operations.

In the logistics world, even seemingly minor inefficiencies can become a significant burden on the productivity of drivers and fleet managers. That’s especially the case if you still rely on manual processes for what’s becoming an increasingly mobile workforce.

Automating in-truck, in-field processes through a mobile device helps you eliminate paper processes and improve the way your drivers work while on the road. This approach gives you a better way to manage the entire workflow—from reconciliation to ticketing and invoicing—through step-by-step processes designed to maximize efficiency.

By simplifying processes and improving efficiencies on the road, you can also create a positive domino effect across your entire organization, improving your daily business management. Start with these steps.

Cut Your Operating Costs

The first step is to remove paper from your in-truck, in-field processes to reduce the ongoing costs associated with fleet management. This will remove the cost of the actual paper, as well as other costs such as:

• Postage and handling: You’ll no longer need to mail a physical invoice to your customers. When a delivery is completed, customers are automatically emailed proof of delivery and an invoice through the automated system.
• Administrative costs: Your administrative team will no longer need to enter data or manage queries manually. All data will be transferred directly from mobile devices in the field to your back-office system. As a result, you can repurpose staff to more strategic tasks.
• Time utilization: With time the most valuable resource, eliminating the need for your drivers to hand-deliver tickets to the office gives them more time to focus on deliveries.

Increase the Number of Deliveries

Any manual process within the truck costs you money by impacting your drivers’ efficiency. And with the industry continuing to deal with a driver shortage, it’s even more critical to reduce your team’s paperwork burden.

With mobile-focused processes that replace manual work, drivers can quickly and efficiently capture any necessary information, complete their order, email a delivery ticket or invoice, and move on to the next delivery.

Stepped processes create a simple-to-follow workflow that guides drivers through deliveries and tracks product totals to automatically generate an accurate ticket when the delivery is completed.

Improve Data Accuracy

One of the most significant problems with manual tickets is that they’re handwritten and manually calculated. Managing data and customer information in this manner lends itself to mistakes. With paper tickets, there are typically at least three people who handle that piece of paper—the driver, who writes it down; the dispatcher, who verifies it at the end of the day; and someone on the administrative team, who enters the data into your accounting system.

Enabling a driver to enter all field information into a mobile device—which automatically calculates and delivers the information to your back office—eliminates the potential for error and allows for a seamless data transfer to each back-office system.

Clean, accurate data is a fundamental part of operating a profitable business in a technologically advanced world. And, having the ability to access that data in near-real-time will help improve efficiency across your organization.

Introduce Cloud-Based Solutions

It has never been easier or more cost-effective to adopt workforce automation solutions. With the introduction of SaaS and cloud-based solutions, advanced mobility and automation are no longer limited to those with large fleets and large budgets. With significantly reduced costs, the cloud gives smaller fleets an opportunity to leverage the benefits gained through automated field processes.

The benefits of these solutions are undeniable, and your ability to modernize with them can help you compete with larger competitors and satisfy your customers.

As your customers grow more tech-savvy by the day, they expect their vendors to keep up. That’s why it’s so important to take a step forward to mobile and leave your paper trail behind.

When you’re ready, start with PDI logistics solutions.

Two key trends are driving trucking fleets to go mobile in order to increase both driver productivity and organizational efficiency. Fluctuating fuel demand is the first trend and drivers in short supply is the second. With both trends anticipated to have long-lasting impacts on fleet management, more businesses are going digital.

Historically, the goal of fleet management and monitoring was all about maintaining a connection between fleet managers and vehicles. The reasons for this included tracking and visibility as well as driver safety and security. Moreover, the process was meant to protect the company’s valuable assets and guarantee the intact delivery of the freight on board.

While fleet monitoring has been the focus of significant modernization, simple telematics systems alone might not be sufficient to accomplish these goals. As a result, modern fleet management now requires the advent of the “connected truck.”

Introducing the Connected Truck

Beyond remote diagnostics, GPS, and zone monitoring, the connected truck must monitor the vehicle’s current condition and its ability to utilize its resources—safely and efficiently. In addition to providing simple diagnostic data, the connected truck interacts with fleet planning and tracking software, manages telematics and deliveries, and is aware of the inventory on each truck at all times.

When fully leveraged, this technology can deliver four key benefits to your fleet operations.

1. Increased Driver Utilization

To maximize productivity, connected truck drivers are always aware of their delivery schedules in real time. Updated dispatch information is delivered to drivers so they can view changes to delivery schedules on their mobile devices. A connected truck is not only linked to dispatch but also to other drivers. Drivers also receive optimized routes throughout each shift to ensure the maximum number of deliveries can be completed.

2. Improved Customer Service

Implementing a connected truck solution also helps you serve your customers better. Without delighted customers, fuel efficiency numbers, geofences, and braking and acceleration ratios don’t matter. Beyond these considerations, a truly connected truck safely completes the fundamental task of delivering the desired inventory in a reasonable amount of time. Customer-focused features such as inventory level sensors, order histories, and breadcrumbed activity tracking enable drivers to provide customers with more precise arrival and departure times. And, if you place all that data in the cloud, you always have the numbers you need to keep your customers informed.

3. Simplified Billing

Simplified billing is another key feature of a truly connected truck. Consider two scenarios: In one, inventory is delivered to a customer by an otherwise disconnected truck. Two weeks later, the customer receives a paper invoice in the mail that gets lost, goes unpaid, accrues late fees, and so on. At best, this sort of old-school billing is a nuisance. At worst, it leads to higher costs and strained customer relations.

In the second scenario, the invoice from the connected truck is provided right on the spot as soon as delivery takes place. Signatures are captured electronically. Delivery tickets and invoices are printed and left onsite or emailed to all parties, providing proof of delivery, a consensus of volume, and accurate transaction details.

4. Enhanced Inventory Management

For some people, inventory management is a combination of guesswork, instincts, and gut feelings. No doubt, these folks get close…sometimes. Other times, not so much—especially when a truck in question has to make 20 deliveries in a day. A connected truck removes the guesswork from inventory management with ERP integration that allows drivers and dispatchers to know exactly what inventory is available on all trucks at all times. So, if one truck is running short on inventory, dispatch can send another truck to take care of the delivery with all relevant customer information automatically transferred as part of a seamless operation.

Let’s face it. Most of us don’t naturally gravitate toward change until there’s a compelling reason for us to do so. The same goes for businesses in the fuel supply industry. People love their “tried-and-true” processes and routines—at least until something forces them to change. However, there are numerous examples in business where it’s much better to initiate (and control) your changes rather than letting your competitors force you to change out of necessity.

One of the clearest examples is digital transformation and how this type of change can help you position your business to compete strategically against much larger competitors. If you can show your employees a smarter and more efficient way to work, they won’t cling to their well-known but less-efficient processes. For oil companies and haulers, this is especially the case in the transformations taking place with fleet drivers and dispatchers.

While not necessarily a new concept, digital transformation has become a top priority in the form of improved paperless dispatch. That drives many operators to ask the question, “How does this benefit me?”

Here are four good examples of how digital transformation featuring paperless dispatch can benefit both your drivers and dispatchers.

Simplified Administration

Drivers and dispatchers that rely on paper for their fuel logistics operations leave themselves susceptible to manual errors, increased administrative time, and a general lack of visibility. This can create issues for both dispatchers and drivers.

Moving to paperless dispatch allows drivers to provide delivery numbers on the spot and share information in real-time via the cloud. Dispatchers stay aware of each action and can take advantage of a “manage by exception” model benefitting from automatic reconciliation, real-time load visibility, and planned versus actual delivery tracking—leading to reduced stress. The back office benefits as well. Electronic deliveries with digital bill-of-lading (BOL) and signature capture help you streamline invoicing to reduce your operating costs.

Greater Flexibility

Because of the highly sequenced delivery schedule for drivers, any changes based on an accident, incident, or unforeseen circumstances directly impact the driver’s ability to drop fuel at the delivery site.

If you implement a paperless solution, dispatchers get a real-time view of what is currently loaded on the truck as well as onsite inventory. Drivers can avoid runouts and overfills by using this data to determine the right quantities of fuel to drop at each location. This real-time view allows both drivers and dispatchers to adapt quickly to fluctuations in the volatile supply chain.

For example, imagine a driver in a scenario where fuel is retained. In that case, they must find another site to deliver the remaining fuel or return to the terminal to unload. With paperless dispatch solutions, dispatchers and drivers have greater visibility using cloud-based data. They can work together more efficiently and leverage real-time data to determine sites where they can add a new delivery.

This simplified information sharing allows easier adjustments to sequenced deliveries. In turn, this reduces friction and improves flexibility for everyone involved—including your customers. Compared to their paper-based counterparts, in-truck driver mobility solutions provide the flexibility to adjust plans in real-time.

Increased Security and Reliability

Because the information for each delivery is accessible through the in-truck solution, drivers and dispatchers no longer need to worry about paper records being misplaced or accidentally destroyed. The data is connected to the dispatch office, so deliveries can still be reconciled, and customers can still be billed.

Oil companies and haulers even have the added benefit of selecting tablet-based solutions. The available options range from replaceable tablets to explosion-proof devices to secure the data in case of a collision or other accident. But no matter the incident, employees utilizing a tablet-based solution have greater peace of mind if something does go wrong. All of the data is stored in the cloud and is easily accessible, regardless of circumstances on the ground.

Better Environmental Awareness

Moving to a highly efficient paperless dispatch model is also good for the environment. The choice leads to less paper waste, which contributes to a more sustainable model for your business. Making this type of eco-friendly choice can improve how consumers perceive your business so you can earn their trust, especially in an industry that is often in the spotlight for environmental concerns.

In some instances, you may not be able to avoid printing an invoice due to government regulations or customer demands. However, you can still go as paperless as possible by leveraging a mobile printer for those situations. By printing invoices on a case-by-case basis, your business reduces the overall amount of paper used.

Change Doesn’t Have to Be Difficult

So, to answer the “How does this benefit me?” question…by leveraging paperless dispatch, drivers and dispatchers can improve their efficiency, visibility, and decision making at every step of the fuel delivery process. Simpler and more flexible in-truck driver mobility solutions save time and money while reducing errors for everyone involved.

Drivers and dispatchers no longer need to worry about inefficiencies that could prevent deliveries. Instead, they can increase their productivity and accuracy while pleasing customers and limiting environmental impact.

If you’re ready to move to paperless dispatch, start with PDI logistics solutions.

If you’re a fuel retailer, you’re no stranger to the volatility of the industry. Not only do you have to manage upstream and downstream impacts, but you’re also tasked with understanding consumer behavior and fuel buying habits.

That might not be difficult to manage during normal day-to-day operations, but what if there’s a sudden disruption to fuel supply? Or an ongoing crisis impacting demand like what we experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic?

Although you can’t predict catastrophes—or their outcomes—you can analyze potential disruptions based on decreased supply or demand to understand how best to react. Revisiting previous crisis situations can offer some guidance in how you can manage future challenges.

Key Factors in Decreased Supply

Fuel supply can run low due to a variety of reasons beyond your control. Events like the Colonial Pipeline shutdown, Hurricane Harvey hitting a refinery and slowing down production, and recent truck driver shortages have caused fuel retailers to scramble in reaction.

When supply is low, you need to ask yourself: Will there be a large spike in the cost of fuel? Will supply be deeply impacted? If it is, how will you adjust your price? And how will your customers react?

In this case, you’ll probably see your costs rising—leading to tighter margins and panic buying from people trying to wrangle some supply. When you consider the finely interwoven fuel supply ecosystem, it’s easy to see why a disruption at any point of the supply chain could lead to price swings:

1. Crude oil is produced from Earth’s natural resources.
2. That raw material is then transported via a pipeline or supertankers to refineries.
3. Once at the refinery, that crude oil is turned into gasoline and other fuel products.
4. Those finished products are then transported by truck, rail, barge, or pipeline to terminal storage facilities.
5. A transport truck picks it up for delivery to local gas stations.
6. The fuel needs to arrive in time to meet consumer demand.

Key Factors in Decreased Demand

We’ve seen low demand most recently due to the pandemic, where mandated lockdowns led to a significant decrease in miles driven and therefore less of a need for fuel.

But we can look back to other instances of dwindling demand like the Great Recession of 2008 and post-9/11 to know that this type of situation should remain top of mind. Typically, the fuel retail business is marked by high volumes and low margins. The age-old question for pricing managers has always been: How do you strike the ideal balance between optimizing margin and volume?

As a fuel retailer, you need to answer several questions in order to maintain the delicate balance between margin and volume:

1. What is the competition doing? What are you doing in response?
2. What is demand like at the macro market level? How is your volume performance in comparison?
3. How is your margin? What’s happening with product costs?

A Look at the Big Picture

Your fuel pricing team is on the front lines of many challenges and disruptions to your business. They need to rely on their data to make informed decisions—especially during times of crisis. You can help alleviate any doubt they have by ensuring that their data is collected and translated accurately. By using an automated pricing solution, you can remove uncertainty and a significant of workload from your pricing team’s burden.

To overcome market-wide challenges, your solution must be able to show your team the value of stock in the ground, what time to reorder, all fuel-related costs, and overall sales. A modern pricing solution will help them track and understand your competitors (who will be rapidly evolving during times of crisis). By equipping your team to price quickly and accurately based on dynamic market conditions, you can free them up to focus on more persistent tasks—like actually managing your c-stores and delivering a better overall customer experience.

As long as you can adapt faster than the competition, challenges and chaos can lead to unique business opportunities. And, when you do experience a decrease in fuel supply or demand, you can use that time to focus on improving other areas of your business.

Start by leveraging modern, reliable technology to seamlessly integrate fuel pricing with inventory management, store-level basket analysis, and consumer loyalty programs. The better you and your team understand those interconnected dynamics, the better equipped you’ll be to weather any crisis that comes your way. To learn more, discover how PDI fuel pricing solutions can help.