The majority of gas distributors are reliant on their rental revenues, but if you can’t keep track of your assets, how on earth can you expect to stay in control of your earnings?
That's why asset management software is so fundamentally important in this hugely competitive industry. With ever-tightening margins, accurately tracking shipments could make the difference between profit and loss.
Gas cylinders are expensive and go astray all too often. Whether that’s down to poor planning, employee theft, or negligence, this is a common problem that can be easily remedied. Sure, mistakes happen – but most of these can be avoided simply by using an effective tracking system.
For over 20 years, TrackAbout’s trusted asset management software has delivered customers huge savings by helping them know exactly where their cylinders are and how they’re being used.
Prior to using TrackAbout, you'll meet with an Implementation Specialist in an initial discovery meeting to set goals and timelines for your asset tracking project. Then, you'll work through a series of phases designed to familiarize you with the software and register your assets. After labeling each asset with a unique barcode, an initial scan collects the required information and adds it to the system. Subsequent scans at each stage of the cylinder’s journey help to compile a detailed history of each and every delivery, the asset, and its contents. By using these data points, everything can be easily reconciled and any issues quickly identified.
Businesses deal with hundreds, if not thousands, of assets each day so it's inevitable there will be some inherent mistakes – whether that’s forgetting to log a delivery or pickup, or simply mistyping a serial number.
Our data suggests about 4-5% of handwritten tickets have a mistake on them. That means that for every 100 tickets, maybe five of them are wrong. Just think about how quickly those errors mount up over a day, month, or even a year?
Tracking helps to eliminate these errors. With our software, users can instantly view the entire life cycle of a cylinder - where it’s been, how long it’s been there, and who handled it along the way.
Despite the cylinders themselves being more valuable than their contents, it’s still surprising that fewer than half of all U.S. distributors are benefiting from asset tracking.
Tracking gives users a clear understanding of their inventories. If you’re unaware a customer has one of your empties, for example, you’re missing out on vital income. TrackAbout provides you with the tools to monitor returnable assets so you can recover, refill, and send them somewhere else to generate more revenue.
It really is a win-win; your customers no longer have empty cylinders taking up valuable space at their facilities and you don’t have to keep replenishing your stocks unnecessarily.
One of the first questions we ask during the sales process is if you truly know how many assets you have at your disposal. You’d be surprised that maybe 95% of the time, the response is well wide of the mark.
A few years ago, one TrackAbout customer initially reported a healthy stock of around 600,000 cylinders. This was an established business with a great reputation and everything had been running smoothly – but they hadn’t been accurately monitoring every delivery and return.
Just 18 months after we started tracking their assets, they were astounded that we’d uncovered another 300,000 cylinders they were completely unaware they owned. TrackAbout had boosted their inventory by half!
Discovering all those cylinders, each costing about $300, was quite a result. But just think how much additional revenue they could have been earning if these had all been out in the marketplace all that time.
TrackAbout helps shorten driver delivery times and greatly reduces the administrative burden. By boosting efficiency and increasing productivity, our customers quickly achieve significant savings. In fact, some of our customers have been able to cover TrackAbout’s entire annual subscription within just four months.
Not only that but, our data suggests that a typical customer with 25,000 cylinders could save as much as $75,000 simply because of improved utilization rates and not having to purchase new assets.
We’ve found that users are able to increase their rental balances by an average of 8% – or around $45,000 each year. Billing errors are also reduced on about 4% of deliveries, totaling $24,000 savings annually.
In addition, TrackAbout has been proven to cut losses due to employee theft by about $7,500; reduce time wasted resolving customer disputes, saving approximately $15,000; and help generate another $45,000 of new business.
With additional features including Bulk Delivery, Proof of Delivery (POD), and Truck Reconciliation & Manifest modules, we’re working with you to keep you in control of your returnable assets.
Ready to take the next step? Request your free TrackAbout demo.