Getting to Know TMS, Part 2 – Moving Bulk Oilfield Commodities

Through the acquisition of Chorus Logistics, W Energy Software extended our customers’ supply chain visibility, making even more possible by combining a state-of-the-art mobile app for drivers, producers, operators, and end-users with a cloud-based back-office suite and our oil & gas SaaS ERP. Energy industry veteran and technology guru Jeff O’Block takes to our blog with a new series that aims to demystify transportation management systems and explore the benefits for bulk commodity carriers, crude first purchasers, energy trading and risk management, and ESG.

Just a few years ago, managing the physical and accounting movement of oilfield commodities was almost entirely paper-based – paper run tickets left in mason jars, grease sheets for pumpers, physical invoices sent by haulers. Producers and carriers have mostly gone digital, even if they still exchange physical run tickets in the field. Supporting hauling operations these days takes a lot of software and back-office capabilities. All of this is really expensive (not to mention G&A costs), and it only gives haulers a static view of where a commodity is in the supply chain.

The cloud and mobile devices changed the game. Smart phones and tablets riding shotgun with drivers introduced exciting new opportunities for the hauling process, including collection of key metadata for every molecule being moved (volume, gravity, BS&W, tank strapping), real-time GPS, accelerometers, thermometers, and cameras. With the W Energy Software transportation management system (TMS), producers can now accept their run tickets digitally then follow the movement of bulk commodities in real-time to the end of the journey. Here’s how we do it.

Our TMS SaaS provides a complete back office for carriers – automated dispatch, inventory management, intermodal scheduling, invoicing, payroll, and regulatory reporting. Connecting the field to the back office application is a mobile app for Apple and Android devices that continuously synchronizes driver location, speed, and status with the cloud. It leverages artificial intelligence algorithms to enable adaptive routing similar to logistics systems used by UPS and FedEx, automatically generating turn-by-turn directions to move commodities along the most efficient path from wellsite to final destination and points in between.

W Energy software’s TMS enables new bulk commodity haulers to get up and running fast with a lean team while empowering existing haulers to shrink G&A, technology, and fuel costs. The system even manages the complexity of international fuel tax agreement (IFTA) regulatory reporting and helps haulers get paid much faster, eliminating the need to factor invoices.

Our TMS enables anyone to get into the trucking business. A producer or even pipeline operator can seamlessly manage carrier operations by effectively creating a virtual trucking fleet through W Energy Software, putting them in control of how and where commodities are moved. For pipeline infrastructure and disposal wells that can cost billions to build, this puts more power in the hands of midstream service providers to extract more value from their assets while extending their reach with a network of intermodal capabilities, including rail and marineThat’s a wrap for blog 2 in my series on W Energy Software’s TMS solution. In the previous post, I gave you our definition of what TMS is and the big benefits of integrating it with W Energy Software’s SaaS ERP and financial accounting. In the next post will have a couple more use cases for crude first purchasers and energy trading, plus benefits for ESG.