Over the years I've worked very hard to help petroleum marketers understand the difference between providing a Fuel Management System versus simply selling fuel.  What is the difference?  There are two facets to the answer.     

One is how you present your product, and the other is what you actually do to help the customer manage their fueling.  When it comes to selling, PowerUp Fleet provides comprehensive training services at the PowerUp Fleet University which will transform your sales team into highly competent, educated professionals.

When it comes to helping a business manage their fueling, the ultimate winners will be those who provide timely, and EFFECTIVE analysis of fueling activity.  It's not enough to simply provide someone with a card that has controls and limits, supplemented by a fuel bill/report at the end of the month.  In today's environment you need to support your client by closely scrutinizing their fueling activity.

Let's discuss some real life events to emphasize what I mean. The rather small borough of West Mifflin, PA recently discovered that an employee's girl friend was using his Fuelman card to fuel her heroin addiction.  Over several months (but less than a year) she was able to purchase $72,000 in fuel, selling it to friends and strangers at a service station. Now the Mayor is reviewing their agreement with Fuelman and asking how could this have happened.  Great question. Someone should have been able to detect the problem, but who?  The client, or Fuelman?

Just recently an administrative captain in Sullivan County, TN was caught fueling another person's vehicle with her Fleet One fuel card.  Only after a store clerk observed it happening did the she get caught.  Come to find out, other clerks had been observing the same event on multiple occasions.  It wasn't until the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation reviewed corresponding Fleet One receipts and Sullivan County Purchasing Department records before they were "able to identify significant discrepancies in miles per gallon and fuel tank holding capacities of vehicles involved in this incident."  Why wasn't this caught? 

Consider the Colorado Department of Transportation who lost over $200,000 to an employee who was "borrowing" cards from idle equipment.  We won't go into how he was able to breach the security of several cards, as that is available on the PowerUp Fleet University, but we will tell you it came to light for a couple of reasons, one of which was the fact that a transaction was "noticed".  Apparently it caught someone's attention that a snow plow fueled in another county in the middle of the summer.  Now the internal auditors for the State are devising their own metrics for analyzing fueling activity.  But who is going to step up for those smaller businesses who can't afford to staff people to create algorithms and analytics tools?

The answer is you, but do YOU have the right tools to do the job?  What should you be analyzing and when?  How do you go about analyzing hundreds or thousands of clients every day?  

Some of the functionality we recommend might be built into the fleet card product that you offer, while the others must be imbedded in your accounting system.  Here are a few  examples of when you should be alerting fleets:

• Transaction frequency increases or deviates from standard use patterns.
• Fuel consumption increases or deviates from standard use patterns.
• A transaction exceeds the tank size of the vehicle.
• MPG deviates from standard ranges (odometer reasonableness check)
• A vehicle fuels outside of a normal geographic fueling area

While these are just a few suggestions within our library of recommended analytics, they give you an idea of the value provided since they would have prevented the examples above.  

The real challenge is first to have the proper technology in place within your organization, and secondly for your sales and support teams to collect the necessary information, I.E. tank size, and then follow through on both the implementation and ongoing monitoring processes.  In the best scenario, this process should be fully automated.     

Regardless, the marketer who can implement advanced tools such as we recommend will secure the larger, more sophisticated accounts, and will be better positioned to compete in a quickly changing market.

To learn more about how you should be managing your fleet fueling business, visit the PowerUp Fleet University today.