At a Glance
- Renoir was engaged by a publicly traded master limited partnership that owns and operates pipelines for crude oil and refined products, to better understand and resolve discrepancies in ticket processing and monthly closing processes related to oil gathering and purchasing.
- The company’s challenges stemmed from a period of significant growth through acquisitions and a doubling of its fleet size over the same period.
- At the end of the project, the company realized significant progress in achieving complete and up-to-date tracking of operator pick-up orders, their status, and order fulfillment.
Key results
Implemented a ticket reconciliation process along with supporting systems to reduce the incidence of missing or duplicate tickets
Improved accountability for ticket submissions to ensure accuracy
Installed new control systems and processes for oil gathering by private fleet and third-party carriers
Reorganized the Ticket Group by defining staffing requirements, accountabilities, and the overall organizational structure
Background
Our Client is a publicly traded master limited partnership formed in the 2000s to acquire, own and operate a diverse range of pipelines for crude oil and refined products, along with terminal and storage facilities, as well as assets related to crude oil acquisition and marketing.
The Challenge
Our Client was at risk of losing several key accounts due to their inability to deliver accurate and timely information on oil gathering and purchasing. Other challenges included missing or duplicate tickets, and ticketing errors. To address these issues, they engaged Renoir to help them better understand and resolve the discrepancies in ticket processing and monthly closing processes.
Analysis
The Renoir analysis team assessed the ticketing processes to identify key challenges and opportunities related to the collection and dissemination of this information.
We discovered that the challenges stemmed from a period of significant growth through acquisitions, coupled with a surge in oil production across North America. During this time, our Client had doubled its fleet size and quadrupled its use of third-party carriers, resulting in the issuance of more than 50,000 tickets per month.
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Project Approach
The project began with Renoir’s Focus Process around three work streams based on the findings of our analysis:
- Lease Set-Up focused on acquiring and installing all the information necessary to ensure the safe, legal, and timely pick-up of customers’ oil, along with the correct allocation of division orders and payments.
- Product Movement was responsible for understanding and identifying opportunities for oil pick-up operations. This included determining customer pick-up requirements, engaging and managing third-party carriers, scheduling vehicles, handling ticketing, and reconciling orders.
- Reconciliation and Payment focused on identifying challenges and opportunities in reconciling pick-ups with oil receipts, ensuring the accuracy of delivery acknowledgments, and transferring shipment information to division orders.
“Renoir was able to help us understand our ticketing operations and develop a workable solution. We had been unable to accomplish this with several years of effort prior to their participation.”
Implementation
We established three work streams for implementation:
- Daily Ticket Reconciliation was tasked with capturing and reconciling all daily pick-up activities in alignment with customer demand requirements.
- Demand Capture focused on the tools and processes required to ensure that all customer pick-up needs were accurately captured and communicated on a daily basis.
- Ticket Group was tasked with defining the work content, Management Control System (MCS), and organizational structure of a new Ticket Management Group responsible for the validation and back-office processing of all tickets related to oil collection.
As part of the implementation phase, Renoir led the development of requirements for a system upgrade to integrate third-party carrier submissions directly into the Ticket and Division Order processing systems. This resulted in faster and more accurate monthly closings and account settlements.
In addition, pilot programs for ticket reconciliation were organized and implemented using an existing system integrated into the pick-up vehicles. This initiative was subsequently extended to various stations and fleet locations within the business. The final step was to upgrade to a more modern and robust transportation management system.
Results
By the end of the project, our Client realized significant progress in achieving complete and up-to-date tracking of operator pick-up orders, their status, and order fulfillment. This laid the groundwork for a system-wide upgrade and the integration of a new and more robust transportation management system.
By improving ticketing rules and processes, and restructuring ticket management processes within the trucking group, our Client achieved a significant reduction in late, missing, and duplicate tickets.
*We have intentionally omitted client-specific details to maintain strict confidentiality.
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