Our ADD User Group covers a variety of topics throughout the year, including budget plans, billing, inventory, heat pumps, and much more to help ADD users improve their processes. One popular and recurring topic is tank monitors. With tank monitors becoming more affordable in recent years, many clients have been able to change to a wider deployment strategy. However, there are still specific types of accounts that see the greatest benefit:
- Unpredictable Usage: While some types of accounts are perfect for standard forecasting methods, like K-factor and usage rate per day, other accounts can display more varied and unpredictable usage patterns. For example, agricultural operations and warehouses use fuel for non-heat reasons that are often less predictable in nature.
- High-Risk Accounts: Important customers or accounts where running out of fuel would be detrimental to their operation, like a restaurant or nursing home, are good candidates for tank monitors.
- Frequent Deliveries: Customers may need multiple deliveries per day or week. For example, a banquet hall with intermittent activities that suddenly needs multiple deliveries in a day can benefit from tank monitors since their usage may be less predictable, and a runout would halt their business activity.
- Hard-to-Reach Customers: Accounts that are in more remote territories and potentially more expensive to deliver, benefit from tank monitors to ensure drops are the ideal size.
While these types of customers can especially benefit from having tank monitors, retailers also gain. Monitors can help maximize gallons per drop, saving trips for your truck and driver throughout the course of a year. Also, with an integration to your back-office delivery system, you should see improved efficiency with your routing.
What’s in Store for Tank Monitors?
The future holds even more opportunities for tank monitor usage. As they get less expensive, there’s even more of a trend to add them to standard keep-full customers for added accuracy and maximum drop size. There’s also been increased interest from customers in getting visibility into their tank levels, and tank monitor apps do just that. Customers may also be willing to pay extra for that ability, providing the added security of knowing what is in the tank and that you, the retailer, have complete visibility, too.
Get Started
The benefits of tank monitors are clear, but how do you get started on implementing them for your business? ADD Systems’ SmartConnect creates a pathway between tank monitors and ADD Energy E360/E3. Through the use of an API (application programming interface), tank monitors fully integrate into E3/E360, providing monitor data, tank levels, and integration with delivery scheduling. Your business, employees, and customers all gain from tank monitors, allowing you to be more efficient and profitable than before.
If you are an ADD client, visit the ADD Forum to listen to the most recent tank monitor best practices call.
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