TrackAbout Provides Efficiency For Guttman Energy

For more than 93 years, Guttman Energy has specialized in fuel distribution in the commercial, industrial, wholesale, and retail commodity markets. From its origins as a family-owned business to becoming a 100% employee-owned company in 2022, Guttman now has more than 225 employee owners,  and moves 1.2 billion gallons of product annually. 

Headquartered in Belle Vernon, Pennsylvania, Guttman Energy also has an office in Bel Air, Maryland as well as several trucking facilities scattered across Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia. 

Adam Dunlap, Business Development Manager of Guttman's Oil and Gas Division, oversaw the implementation of TrackAbout two years ago and says the software has helped boost efficiencies, improve productivity, and strengthen customer relationships. 

Q: What were some of the challenges Guttman Energy was facing before introducing asset management software into its operations?  

At Guttman Energy, we help our customers track some of their assets and have approximately 165 of our own fuel cubes, ranging from 100 gallons to our largest 21,000-gallon tanks. In total, that is 427 different assets. 

Before using TrackAbout, we relied on Excel spreadsheets and did everything manually, to keep track of when tanks were moving and where they were moving to, through a chain of text messages. It was very “old school” and caused many issues – from missed billings and invoices to long bottlenecks, with people waiting for the spreadsheets to be updated, reviewed, and finalized. Our Billing team had to manually key in all the data, which wasn't an efficient process. 

There were also issues that resulted in either lost revenue or incorrect billings, which could have risked customer relationships. 

Q: What did you have to consider before deciding on TrackAbout? 

We spent considerable time looking at the different types of software that were available to us. Guttman has a full in-house IT team, so we also considered the option of developing our own platform, but being able to tell our customers that their data was being managed by an independent third-party with SOC2 Type 2 Certification really added integrity to our process. Cybersecurity is a major concern globally and we wanted to offer customers the reassurance that it would be extremely hard to compromise our business. 

We knew it was going to take a lot of time, effort, and energy but wanted to grow the business. TrackAbout checked all of those boxes and in February 2022, we began implementation. 

Q: What was the implementation process like and what support did you receive from the TrackAbout team? 

We let TrackAbout drive the bus on this, and it really was seamless. They gave us a list of requirements – like having a project manager and telling us the hardware and assets we would need – and then they managed the whole thing from start to finish. There was some back-end work to integrate it with our systems, but it was all relatively easy. 

TrackAbout was superb: they laid out their requirements upfront, let us know what the software was capable of, and managed our expectations.  

Q: What do you like most about the software?

Being able to see our data in real time and integrate it with our back-office system for a more efficient start-to-finish process for our customers has been huge. 

The thing we love most about TrackAbout is its versatility and customization. Although it’s a plug and play system, you’re able to modify the basic setup to specifically gather what you need or add workarounds that the standard package may not accommodate. TrackAbout does all the developmental work and gets you where you need to be. 

As we were primarily using this in our Oil & Gas Division, connectivity is also a real issue for us when we're working in remote areas of the Tri-state area of western Pennsylvania, northern West Virginia, and eastern Ohio. Being able to capture data in real time without any problems was a huge selling point. TrackAbout let us know how we could overcome connectivity issues and helped us to collect the information we needed.  

We bill based on the exact time of delivery, so being able to capture that data accurately – even if we aren’t able to physically upload that information to our systems at that moment – was really important. Most of the other software we looked at wasn’t able to do this and could only record the date and time it got uploaded, which would affect our billing. 

We also some subcontractors and one of the big challenges we had was waiting for them to bill us. There was normally a five-to-seven-day gap where we didn't know the specifics about the deliveries, so we couldn’t invoice our customers. TrackAbout helped eliminate that big time gap and gave us visibility into what was going on at an individual customer level. 

TrackAbout also removes all the tedious manual data entry, captures everything in real time, and stops any billing issues. 

We’ve found the software straightforward to use and didn't need a lot of training – but if we do have any difficulties, Support has always been quick to respond. There is a real community feel about TrackAbout; we know every point of contact on the team and if we have something that is pressing, we can reach out directly to whoever we need to quickly get the answers and a resolution. 

Q: What specifically would you recommend about TrackAbout software to others?

We would 100% recommend TrackAbout. We found that it’s one of the most cost-effective platforms out there and the customer service is excellent. Even though we're passed that initial project management phase, TrackAbout's team is still very hands-on and consistently follows up to make sure we're getting the most out of the software. They even look at our planned projects to see how they can diversify the platform to meet our future needs. 

TrackAbout has helped to streamline our processes and from a customer standpoint, we really like the new system and the automation on approvals and payments. We have been able to significantly reduce paperwork and administration time.

Just weeks ago, we rolled out TrackAbout to the first of our subcontractors. Within a few days, they were using it effectively and we were getting great data back. They didn’t need much training and there were zero integration issues to get them online and functional. 

We're now looking at rolling this out to our other subcontractors and are looking at how much we can unlock for them in terms of visibility. Again, that is something that TrackAbout has really helped us with. 

Soon, we’ll be starting to use another module to help track the number of days an asset was on rent with the customer or, if it’s a per gallon fee on the tank rental, we’ll be able to capture the gallons that went through that asset on a given time period, so we can bill accurately.  

We’ll also soon be implementing maintenance tracking as well – eventually taking photos for inspection purposes to show the condition of tanks when they left the yard and when they were returned.  

Even two years in, we know we’re still not using TrackAbout to its full potential. 

About Guttman Energy 

Founded in 1931, Guttman Energy− one of the region’s largest private companies − is a full-service fuel distribution enterprise providing fuel solutions, procurement, and programs to a wide variety of commercial, industrial, and governmental organizations.  As a 100% employee-owned organization, their employee owners advocate for customers’ fuel and transportation needs with care, pride, and responsibility.  

Customers partner with Guttman Energy for their exceptional customer service, industry-leading logistics, and pricing solutions. Their problem-solving capabilities, unsurpassed market intelligence, and expertise are the results of more than 90 years of experience navigating the fuel buying market.