30th December 2009Blackwater Fuels

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Introduction

Blackwater Fuels LTD is a leading distributor of home heating and commercial fuels throughout Essex and the surrounding Counties in the United Kingdom. Based on traditional values Blackwater Fuels operates a professional and extremely efficient service from their head quarters in Tollesbury. Established in 2005 Blackwater remains a family run organisation with the focus not merely on being the most competitive but also offering the greatest service. Blackwater has the desire to establish long term relationships with all their customers, whether they wish to heat a small home or a large business Blackwater will provide the same expert, professional service.

What was their problem?

Blackwater had an ERP solution in place to manage the day to day running of their business. Anita, Operations Manager at Blackwater Fuels stated that 'this system became un-workable as it could not be adapted to meet the specific needs of the fuel distribution industry'

After running with this system for 4 years they realised that in order to support the continued growth of the business Blackwater required an ERP system that could adapt and grow alongside the business.

The key issue faced by Blackwater was the extraction of customer and product information from the current system. Anita described the process as 'extremely long winded' resulting in an increase in the amount of time, effort and money spent on particular tasks within the organisation.

What they saw was possible?

After initial conversations and business exploration meetings, Blackwater Fuels realised that they could deploy a complete solution that ran their day to day business encompassing sales, banking, financials and customer relationship management.

SAP Business One offers an easy to use, intuitive user interface that fully integrates Blackwater's complete business. Moreover it provides the ability to slice and dice live data from any aspect of the system.

An overriding business objective was to ensure that the Blackwater Fuel's sales team could process orders more effectively and efficiently. With SAP Business One Blackwater understood that this was achievable.

The major attraction of working closely with APH Computers was the vast knowledge and expertise they possess of not only with regards to SAP Business One but to business processes in general. Their helpful and extremely knowledgeable Business One experts have been described by Anita as 'second to none and that the on-site consultation provided was fantastic'.

One overriding factor that ensured APH were selected as the ideal SAP partner is their extensive knowledge of the SAP Business One product. APH's in depth knowledge of SAP has resulted in them never escalating any issue directly to SAP. Although it is fantastic to know that APH are also assisted by SAP's expert support structure, APH's support consultants have such in depth and expert knowledge of SAP Business One they are yet to have to refer to them directly.

Implementation

Unlike many other organisations and companies, fuel distributors such as Blackwater have to complete an RDCO report (return deals of controlled oils). This report must be sent back to the Inland Revenue each month as opposed to every year as is the case within other organisations. This report is now generated automatically and therefore a painstaking task that took a couple of days can now be performed instantly. Black Water Fuels can quickly run off their monthly VAT returns without having to dedicate a member of staff to spending days each month performing this task manually.

In addition oil prices are changing daily therefore Blackwater Fuels wished to have the ability to view profit margins instantly. As soon as the fuel price is committed to the system by a member of the team, gross profit per line is presented to them.

In order to achieve the bespoke work required by Blackwater, APH Computer s took full advantage of SAP Business One's SDK (software development kit). The SDK tools allow partners to develop applications or integrate applications that add additional value to SAP Business One; however they do not interfere with the core functionality of the system.

What results have you seen?

Three months after implementing SAP Business One, Blackwater fuels have witnessed vast amount of improvements across their business.

The major benefit that Blackwater has seen is the speed in which they can retrieve information from their system.

Anita at Blackwater has stated that since moving over and going live with SAP Business One 'the time taken to retrieve customer information has been reduced by 50%' ensuring that customers are not kept waiting on the end of the telephone and members of the sales team are far more productive. In addition SAP Business One has made the made it far easier for Blackwater Fuels to process daily sales tickets. Again streamlining the business and freeing up valuable staff time.

Moreover the incorporation of a complete, single platform, has ensured that the duplication of tasks has been eliminated, providing much greater visibility on all of the business transactions and processes. In addition customer's queries can now be answered effectively and efficiently.

In addition to the fantastic information that can be pulled from SAP Business One instantly, Anita has praised the adaptability of the system to meet the very specific needs of the fuel distribution industry. The ability to add specific buttons and reports to Business One has ensured that software is 'far more workable for the future' compared to its predecessor.

Anita has given great praise the flexibility and adaptability of APH's expert Business One consultants. 'They are always available and can help adapt Business One any which way to ensure it works for us'.

Overall SAP Business One has provided Blackwater Fuels with ability to access its vital business information twice as quickly as before. Blackwater can view customer information from the begging of the order and not half way through as previously. SAP Business One has provided the basis to help support the growth of Blackwater fuels and the ability to adapt to the businesses changing needs in the future.

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