Inspiration for Change

MANUAL DISPATCH LIMITS VISIBILITY INTO SHIPMENT STATUS

Operating in major basins across North America, a leading midstream transportation provider operates a large truck fleet that moves more than 1,000 loads of produced water, propane, and other natural gas liquids (NGL) each month. Like many carriers, it relied on manual dispatch and phone based communications, requiring full time back office staff to manage driver assignments and communicate status updates with customers.

Driver Utilization & Key Performance Indicators

Seeking to further optimize its extensive trucking operations, the service provider’s management team wanted to leverage corporate data more effectively in order to better analyze driver utilization and productivity. The company wanted to see how many drivers are working at any given moment, productive or nonproductive hours of service, and revenue generation by driver.

Reconciling Operational Costs with Invoicing

The service provider relies on a network of third party carriers; however, the associated fees and costs were not centrally tracked preventing a clear and current view of accrued expenses. To better understand spending and project cash flow, it wanted to capture all transportation events – including disposal fees, demurrage, and third-party hauling time – in order to calculate total, landed cost for each transaction, reconcile, and expedite invoicing.

Sluggish Accounts Receivable and Cash Flow

Paper-based and manual processes in the field impeded current and accurate revenue forecasting, including physical bills of lading for each shipment. The service provider wanted to accurately estimate revenue by capturing field tickets and bills of lading electronically in order to automate transactions, accelerate accounts receivable invoicing, and optimize cash flow.

Benefits of W Energy Software

Automated Dispatch and Continuous Customer Communication

The service provider selected the W Energy Software Transportation Management System (TMS) to streamline its bulk transportation operations with a cloud-based back office solution (AxelHub) purpose-built for oil & gas. It automates dispatch with flexible capabilities for drivers to pick up or drop off from nearest location, manually set schedules when needed, and instantly provide customers with order updates at any point in the shipping process.

Real Time Insights into Driver Performance

The connectivity and communications provided through its TMS solution have revolutionized operations starting with each driver who use tablets and the W Energy Software mobile app (TollTagger) to electronically capture bills of lading, accelerating transactions. The midstream company’s management team now has access to a wide variety of economic productivity metrics, including revenue per driver hour for every driver currently on the road as well as historical performance.

Rapid Reconciliation and Customer Invoicing

W Energy Software’s TMS provides the transportation service provider with a rate matrix for all carriers that enables the capture of missing fees and costs. Importantly, the solution automatically calculates landed cost based on any transportation events, allowing the service provider to immediately reconcile and invoice customers while incorporating disposal fees, demurrage, and third-party hauling time.

Accelerating Shipments and Deal Flow

Connecting the field to the TMS back office application is a mobile app that 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 well site to final destination. What’s more, by eliminating paper-based and manual processes, the service provider has reduced G&A while enabling the company to rapidly collect operations data, process orders faster, accelerate billing, and ensure cash flow.