The rollout of EnterpriseOne (E1) software for fuel sales is drawing closer as the number of trucks testing the system continues to grow. Within the past week, 11 trucks have made the transition to E1 and the testing is progressing well, according to Barry Oden, district manger for the northeast.
“We still have a few bugs we are working through, but we are getting really close,” Oden says.
He says that’s a dramatic improvement from where things stood after the initial pilot testing for the program began.
“We started the rollout with all of Marty Mills’ plants in October,” Oden says. “We realized right away that we needed additional development time to fine tune the system, so we scaled it back to just one plant in Bowling Green in December while we worked through the issues.”
Though it took time to refine the system’s glitches, Oden says great progress has been made.
“Marty and his crew in Bowling Green really took one for the team while we worked through the issues, but we’ve since rolled the testing back out to all of Marty’s plants and we’re pleased with the performance we are seeing,” Oden says.
The rollout is expected to expand to Monroe City, Palmyra and Shelbina on May 15. A few weeks later, Columbia, Fulton, Mexico and Paris will go live with E1 on June 6.
Oden expects the changeover process to E1 will be a similar experience as the transition that was made with non-fuel sales for BP/LP employees.
“We expect to hit the ground running with this next set of plants,” he said. “Will there be some speed bumps? Sure. But, overall, it should go fairly smoothly.”
The transition to the E1 system is critical to the company’s continued progress toward improving the efficiency of its fleet. The goal is to get all bobtail trucks to haul an average of 600,000 gallons of propane per year and for refined fuel tank wagons to haul a million gallons or more.
“This is a big piece of the puzzle,” Oden says. “E1 gives us enhanced visibility for our fleet utilization and will help us modernize our delivery process. This will change the way we look at routing. We’ve been routing trucks the same way for seven years and we needed to adapt to keep up with our competition. This is going to streamline our operations and improve our business.”
Anyone with questions regarding the rollout of fuel sales in E1 should contact their operations manager or district manager for more information.