Considering the multitude of factors that make up fuel contracts – fluctuating pricing, hard-to-chase information from transportation providers, a bevy of regional contract choices, broker data, regional difference in fuel grades, the sheer volume of contracts, etc.– the details multiply exponentially making fuel contracts notoriously difficult to both navigate and administer.
Category and contract managers and engineers alike often get pulled into mundane invoice settlement tasks that absorb too much of their time and contribute to underperforming commercial relationships. The answer to streamlining and optimizing fuel contract performance is automation.
By automating existing sources to verify the disparate components of a fuel contract, you can free up time from the tedious, repetitive reviews of each and every delivery or the hours wasted reconciling invoices and, instead, enable your team to put their efforts toward strategic tasks that execute plans more safely and efficiently.
Several examples of existing sources of data that can easily be captured and automated include rack volumes, transportation settlements, tax tables, pricing and volumes in the system of record and reconciliation processes with enterprise-resource planning (ERP) systems.
Each of these distinct sources can be tapped to provide accurate, automated data sources that feed a smart contract – a codified version of commercial terms – to create the single source of truth necessary to streamline fuel purchasing and reconciliation processes and to optimize fuel management.
For those looking for greater performance from their fuel contracts with improved visibility and traceability of fuel allocation, the ability to connect data sources directly to the order-to-cash process, to automatically apply pricing and freight rules to approve or reject loads, and to ensure you only pay for what you truly receive, then smart contracts are paving the way to better contract performance and less wasted man-hours around the settlements process.
