CHALLENGES

Outdated Technology That Limited Growth

According to Chris Stanely, vice president and office manager at Euliss Propane, the company’s former energy software lacked the features and capabilities necessary for growth in the residential propane market.

While there was plenty of potential to expand Euliss Propane’s customer base, the software’s limitations made it challenging to take advantage of those opportunities.   

“Our competition had higher pricing, and we were trying to figure out how to reach those residential customers and provide propane services to them,” explained Stanley. But their software at the time didn’t have the technology they needed to do so effectively and efficiently.

“It really slowed our growth process,” Stanley said.

The company’s former solution, purchased in the late 1980s, was a paper-driven system — for dispatching, deliveries, work orders, etc. — with no electronic means for connecting delivery and service records to customers’ accounts.

And it wasn’t user-friendly. Stanley shared that it could take new employees up to a year to get up to speed.

After another vendor acquired the software company, Euliss Propane began looking at alternatives. 

Stanley explained that the new vendor notified them it would no longer support the software and offered a discount to transition to a different energy software platform managed by the vendor.  

While choosing the vendor’s other option would have been simpler, he said it lacked the features and capabilities Euliss Propane needed to grow. 

“When we lifted the hood of that other software, we saw it wasn’t a modern platform. It was an engine with 200,000 miles on it,” Stanley recalled.

Stanley also noted the dispatch-related advantages of sending delivery assignments directly to drivers’ tablets through the Cargas Energy software. 

“I immediately noticed the efficiencies in building routes — adding emergency calls and making other changes without sending text messages or otherwise interrupting drivers,” he shared. “The communication between the tablets and the office is seamless.”

Making price updates became more manageable, too. According to Stanley, it was a huge change from their former system, which required loading price changes on a memory card, which drivers then used to download the new pricing information on their truck’s laptops.

Because Cargas Energy is cloud-based and data is updated in real-time for all users no matter where they are, it has saved time and eliminated manual effort. 

In addition, Cargas Energy has empowered the company to reduce its reliance on paper records. According to Stanley, moving away from printed delivery tickets saves 30 to 45 minutes per driver daily based on a 30-stop day.

Also, Stanley said Euliss Propane quickly experienced benefits from the tank monitoring integration with Mid:Com that directly reports tank levels to the customer’s account in Cargas Energy.

“We have one refilling site. So, everyone has to come back to that one main bulk plant,” described Stanley. 

He said that with the former software solution, the company was limited in how far away from the bulk plant drivers could make deliveries because they didn’t always have a firm grasp on what was happening with the customers’ tank levels. 

“Now we know exactly what’s in the customer’s tank,” Stanley said. “The Cargas Energy [forecasting] system works so well, and with the tank monitoring integration, we were able to expand our service radius out another 10 to 15 miles.”

He said the solution has also improved delivery efficiency, eliminating unnecessary stops. “We have close to 6,000 customers. If we can cut out one delivery a year to each of those 6,000 customers with the technology, that saves us money. And if we keep our costs down, we can keep our costs lower for our customers.”