Business Process Development - Oil Recycling Company

The Challenge

A large multi-region oil recycling company had inherited a Lotus Notes/Domino environment which it perceived as simply an email system. While discussing email needs with Brazen, it became apparent that they did not understand the variety of applications which could be built with Notes/Domino. They were in dire need of a method to apply pricing to all the recycled oil that they were picking up. In a matter of years the market had completely turned on them, and they now had to pay customers for the oil they were removing rather than the customer paying them to remove it. Prices fluctuated weekly. They also did not want to invest any further in their custom-built dispatch system which did not handle pricing.

The Goals

Under the current system,15 account managers would send emails into an accounting person. This accounting person would then have to match up hundreds of customers with the customer's contracted price and then match these results to the trucks that performed the pick ups. The system was simply overwhelming and unworkable. The goal was to create a system that could manage each customer's price for oil at each location (some customers had up to a hundred different locations), and match this to each truck. The system also had to have an approval process, ties into other corporate systems, and the ability to restrict readership access.

The Solution

The first step was to reveal the true identity of Lotus Notes/Domino, and show the customer how it could be so much more than just an email system. We defined and built an application that could track every load of oil picked up, apply the correct pricing to it, and move the data into the customer's accounting system. The application allowed each office to enter a price for each customer and each customer location (since prices could be different for different locations). The regional managers began approving all price changes through automatic notifications. Each month, the accounting staff exports every pick up and imports it in to the accounting system. Over 3000 checks are cut each month. The application automatically updates each pick up record with check information.

The Result

The new application uncovered many inconsistencies throughout the company. There had been no set way for account managers to properly price oil. The application brought consistency and visibility to practices and procedures which in turned allowed the company to grow at an accelerated pace.

The customer was overwhelmed with the return on investment and has since started building other applications in Lotus Notes/Domino.