If your ERP/back-office system is being sunsetted – you’ll likely end up doing one of the two things: upgrading to a more expensive product or moving to another vendor. But have you considered this third option: implementing dispatch and back office together? It’s a lot more simple and easier and actually increases your back office efficiency as compared to just upgrading to a new ERP. Wondering how? We talk about it in this blog.
“We’ll build it out for you…”
Said a legacy vendor and ended up sunsetting the product itself.
That’s a story we’ve heard time and again. Even more so in the past couple of months with a lot of leading legacy tools being sunsetted.
So, fuel marketers like yourself stuck with such legacy vendors end up doing one of these two things:
Upgrade to a newer/pricier alternative offered by your existing legacy vendor
Switch to a completely new ERP/back-office vendor
Now, here’s what you need to know about each of these options:
If you move to a new system with the same legacy vendor -
You will be paying a premium for the new system which may or may not be the perfect fit for your business
Implementation can drag on for months and can go up to a year or more too. It would largely depend upon how the vendor prioritizes implementation for customers.
You’ll likely be doing a lot of manual work. Your billers/accountants might still have handkey data into their BO systems manually.
There’s no guarantee that this product won’t be phased out in a couple of years
If you switch to a new ERP system - the biggest challenge is extensive data cleanup & migration that’s required as you transition to a completely new system.
But, let’s give you a third (and better) way: Upgrading your dispatch and back office system simultaneously.
Why implementing FleetPanda’s fuel dispatch software alongside a new ERP system is the smarter choice?
It’s your chance to move away from the trap of legacy systems to a modern tool that actually works for you.
Sooner or later - you’ll need to update your dispatch system - whether it’s on pen and paper or you’re using a legacy system. It’s mission-critical if you want to increase your back-office efficiency. So why delay implementing it when you can just as easily implement a new dispatch and accounting system simultaneously and gain a competitive edge?
Having said that - we also know that implementing another tool sounds like a lot of work. We won’t lie - it is. But it’s not as complicated as you think.
At FleetPanda - we make this transition extremely smooth and easy for your team. Here’s how:
Implementation with…well almost all the tools you already use. Even if you need to build out some custom integrations - we can do it quickly like we’ve for many of our customers.
Easy data Cleanup & migration - We do all the extensive data clean up for you - so that only clean records go into our dispatch system. We get all the data from your existing system into our platform. And integration with your back-office system enables us to push all this BOL, delivery data etc into your new back-office.
Digitized Dispatch - Our dispatch software digitizes and automates all of your workflows - right from order creation to dispatch, delivery, reconciliation and billing. This saves your teams ‘hours of busywork’. Gives you complete transparency into operations which can bring down costs by 5-10%.
Seamless data flow between dispatch and accounting - Integrated dispatch and accounting means - your billing teams don’t have to spend countless hours manually entering data into the BO system. Invoices go out the door much faster.
All new customer/supplier data added to FP is auto-synced into your ERP system so you don’t have to switch between tools.
We’ve done this successfully for quite a few of our customers. 3L Energy Solutions being one of them.
A little background about them: 3L Energy Solutions was formed as a merger of 3 fuel distribution companies acquired by Spec Oil - a global commodity trading firm.
The biggest challenge was to bring operations across all 3 companies - into a single platform. Imagine the level of data cleanup needed with each of these companies having different processes and data spread across different tools. With FleetPanda - this transition was smooth. In just about a few weeks - 3L Energy was fully live on our dispatch solution.
With a unified, integrated dispatch solution - 3L Energy has seen significant growth post the 3-way merger.
Why is FleetPanda the better choice?
Short story: We’re built for this.
Long Story: Not so long ago - we were fuel marketers ourselves. Give a fuel marketer with an engineering background some broken processes - and a beautiful dispatch software is what you get. Even when we were fuel marketers, we realized then what you talk about today: paper processes and disconnected systems that slow you down. It’s why we built FleetPanda - to make operations more efficient. And now it’s used by leading fuel marketers like Moffitt Services, McNeece Bros, Pacific States Petroleum, Coleman Oil and others.
With a team of silicon valley engineers, structured implementation to processes, flexible product, and prompt customer support - we make software upgrade/transition to a new back-office system extremely smooth and easy for you.
Ready for the switch? Let’s make it happen. Feel free to schedule a call with our team - we'd be happy give you a demo of how implementing dispatch and accounting system together works.
