Getting to Know TMS, Part 4 – Energy Trading and Risk Management

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.

Over the last two blog posts, I’ve shown you how W Energy Software’s transportation management system (TMS) supports the unique complexities of bulk commodity carriers and crude first purchasers. Revisit these to learn about the core competencies of our TMS, which include a state-of-the-art mobile app for drivers, cloud-based back office capabilities for automating dispatch, inventory management, invoicing, and regulatory. Building up to a discussion around energy trading, we’ll take a deeper dive into how W Energy Software’s TMS drives deal flow, risk management, and market analysis.

If you’re in the business of selling finished fuels and refined products, your team may often feel like you are in the banking business. That’s because paper-based transactions, inconsistent routing of tickets from operations, and manual workflows delay accounts receivable invoices by months, which can feel like you are continuously lending money to buyers, impacting cash flow. Given the volume of transactions involved, your team can be out millions at any given time, underscoring the need for robust accounting processes that work in parallel with the logistical complexities of energy trading.

There are many moving parts, yet the types of TMS solutions aimed at solving energy trading present cost and complexity overkill for the industry and can take a year and massive capital outlay to deploy.

No doubt, it’s a complicated business where traders must constantly track rack and OPIS prices, forecast monthly and annual weighted averages, and determine optimal times to load from the yard, pickup from rack, stockpile, hold, and sell. Energy trading is fiercely competitive, leading service providers to optimize fleet movement to better service customers, a complex dance that involves continuous dispatch updates and analysis of electronic logging data (ELD) and driver utilization to prevent turnover.

On the risk side, margins on trucking operations are constantly narrow, requiring service providers to precisely gauge fuel demand for intensive oilfield operations, such as hydraulic fracturing where even a small miscalculation can result in significant monetary loss. And for regulatory, service providers face major challenges in maintaining current physical position reports and ensuring DOT compliance.

W Energy Software’s TMS doesn’t just make a good energy trading and risk management (ETRM) solution, it’s one of the best on the market and the only one that can be deployed in less than two months and at a fraction of the cost of the bloated ETRM solutions out there or big box ERP. It automatically records transactions and incorporates real-time OPIS and rack prices into cloud-based deal movement screens, enabling marketing teams to instantly view suppliers and customer pricing, KPIs (e.g., run time, drive time, load/unload time), and margin calculations. Plus, leverage our trend graphs and weighted average algorithms to gain unprecedented visibility into high volume monthly transactions and empower your organization to double or even triple output.

With W Energy Software’s TMS, you’ll accelerate accounts receivable and cash flow while mitigating risks with automatically generated physical position reports. And this is just the tip of the iceberg!

I’d love to tell you more about leveraging our technology for ETRM, so reach out if you’d like to learn more. I’m bringing my blog series on W Energy Software’s TMS to a close soon with a look at how we can help meet your team’s ESG goals, so stay tuned.