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United Oil of the Carolinas
 
United Oil of the Carolinas is located in Gastonia, NC and operates in both North Carolina and South Carolina. The company was started in 1934 as an Amoco jobber and they still market that brand, along with BP, Chevron, Exxon, Phillips, Pure and Shell. United Oil is a wholesale petroleum operation, serving over 120 dealer sites. They also operate a small petroleum equipment repair business.

Prior to automating their office, all of the tasks associated with managing their fuel inventory and billing their dealers were performed manually. They sent employees out to all of the stations to read their meters, and all of the bills were written by hand. United Oil’s dispatcher had the daunting task of determining the fuel inventory needs of their customers. “Our consigned inventories were bubbling out the top of the tanks,” comments Lewis Efird, President.

These manual processes were having a big impact on United Oil’s finances and labor hours. “Our inventory turns were terrible and the costs of carrying that inventory were killing us. Our receivables were running away,” Lewis says. On top of that, their monthly monitoring and leak detection were done by tank testing and manual inventory reconciliation. Lewis stresses that both are paperwork- and inventory-intensive ways to accomplish this task.

United Oil began researching software systems that would take on the burden of much of the procedures that they were handling manually. They were looking for a system

  “The credit card automation saved us around 12 hours per week of data entry that we now spend on other, more productive areas. We anticipate the invoice import will save 5 to 8 hours per week and the BOL import will save another 15 while decreasing the turnaround time for our invoices. In a small office like ours, that’s a lot of time savings.”

In 2002, United Oil purchased another jobber operation. With this acquisition, they grew by 50% in one day. “Without AIMS helping us to implement COMPAS’
credit card module to handle our five major brands, we couldn’t have processed all of the data,” Lewis points out. “Once we got all of the new stations calling into our AUTOSEND system, we consolidated staff and were able to get the bills out in a timely manner.”

United Oil has come to appreciate the value of COMPAS' automation. And as the old saying goes, hindsight is 20/20. If Lewis had known then what he knows now, he would do things a little differently. “I wish I had required EFT’s on all customers from day one and incorporated

that would allow them to collect their data more efficiently, and then use this data to consolidate their inventory, billing and dispatch functions. "We paid for our system in inventory reductions in the first year."

Lewis Efird, President

   the AIMS Document Fax module and Customer EFT program. Now it is a battle to go back and negotiate those terms.”

And what does United Oil see in
their company’s future? "I feel that
And although they found that AIMS could give them the capabilities they were looking for, that was not the primary reason United Oil chose AIMS as their software vendor. What convinced United Oil that AIMS was the company that they wanted to do business with? Lewis states it very simply, “The people.”

In 1993, United Oil purchased AUTOSEND to streamline their dispatching and better manage their inventory. Several months later, they made the decision to integrate it with AIMS’ COMPAS system, and more fully automate their office. Eventually they added AUTOSIR, which automated their tank and line testing and drastically reduced the time spent performing reconciliations.

We asked Lewis how United Oil has benefited from implementing these systems and working with AIMS: “We get our problems resolved quickly. We can propose new ways of thinking about our data and AIMS always tries to accommodate us. AIMS is trying to help the jobber community think of their back office data in ways that can make it an asset and harness the data to empower employees to perform more in less time through automation. We paid for our system in inventory reductions alone in the first year. Our inventory turns have doubled and our DSO (Days Sales Outstanding) has steadily declined due to better, faster information.”

  our company is setting the foundation for rapid growth by getting our systems fully automated,” Lewis comments. “We have the credit card modules and are in the process of implementing the fuel invoice importation. From there, we intend to automate our BOL procedures by importing from our vendors daily or even twice daily. Once we get those behind us, I really see no impediments to double digit growth rates without adding office staff.”

Lewis offers the following advice: “Don’t be satisfied with the status quo. There are experts out there, like AIMS, who are focused on your data and know how to harness it and make it work for you. AIMS can tailor a solution just in those areas that you feel you need improvement. Or they can offer a completely integrated solution like ours that incorporates inventory, billing, leak detection, and automation solutions all from one team. We enjoy our relationship with the people at AIMS. We would highly recommend them to anyone.”

 

 

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