How Technology Helps Mirabito Keep Its Energy Units Lean and Efficient

This article is brought to you by Add Systems.

Mirabito Energy Products is one of those long-established East Coast energy providers that started delivering coal and heating oil in the early days of the industry and expanded over the years to provide a full range of energy solutions and a strong convivence retail presence throughout upstate New York, Pennsylvania and southern New England.

The company was founded by Italian immigrant James Mirabito in 1927 out of his Norwich, N.Y., facility, and today distributes heating oil, propane, natural gas, coal, gasoline, diesel fuels and kerosene in addition to operating over 100 convenience stores in New York and Pennsylvania.

How does a company with so many moving pieces keep operations efficient?

“Honestly, it’s a huge challenge,” said Eric Bunts, Mirabito’s chief information officer. “You do have some symmetry across these business units, but you have a lot of diversity, and you have a lot of varying priority scopes. It has complexities, and it’s something that is a constant conversation in our organization.”

Bunts noted that it’s an ongoing strategic development process and Mirabito focuses on efficiency, enhancement and customer engagement. Mirabito relies on technology to not only keep the operation manageable, but to achieve optimal performance.

On the home comfort side (heating fuels and HVAC service) served by the residential home and light commercial division, Mirabito has enhanced its delivery process which uses ADD Systems’ Raven mobile delivery solution for the fuel and energy industry, which is designed to improve driver efficiency and reduce mistakes by providing real-time data to drivers on a handheld device. In addition to the core functions Mirabito has found a way to use this and other technology to enhance operational capability.

Will-call customers are an important market segment for home heating fuel retailers, but one where calling in to place these unscheduled orders can increase administrative workload from the customer service representative to the dispatcher. Mirabito has automated the process to allow will-call customers to place their own orders using solutions from several vendors and ADD SmartConnect for linkage to the back-office system.

“We’re always looking to reduce customer service representatives’ administrative burden, but we don’t want to negatively impact the customer experience,” said Bunts. “This made for a more streamlined and efficient process with our customers, but it’s also an aspect that they really appreciate and come back to, again and again.”

The gains continue with the dispatching component, where these unexpected orders are injected into an already orderly delivery routing schedule.

“It’s February and your truck is across the street and a neighbor sees it and says I need fuel and makes an order,” Bunts said. “Having the ability to on-demand change that routing schedule and accommodate that across-the-street call-in while you’re still in the neighborhood–if not literally at the house next door–there’s huge efficiency gains.”

Further, Mirabito built its own mobile app (also integrated into the back office with Smart Connect) catered to the home heat side of the organization that builds on the automation.

“The retention and utilization rates from our mobile app continue to amaze me,” Bunts said. “We’re to the point now where people are going in, selecting their plans, signing up and paying for their contract from their mobile app. That’s not the historic interaction you see with home fuel delivery, and it’s a very impressive engagement point.”

Mirabito has also been using technology to improve its wholesale operation delivering fuel to its retail dealer customers and its commercial mobile fueling operations.

While convenance retailers have been quick to adopt such technological innovations as scanning and real-time inventory (among many other operational initiatives), the commercial and wholesale side was initially slower to move away from the phone, note cards and fax machines. Fortunately, that shift to technology has rapidly accelerated.

Mirabito uses ADD solutions to get more visibility into the rack and further process accounting integration.

“It’s critical to make sure that we’re picking up the right product from the right rack and the right supplier,” Bunts said. “There are a lot of factors that go with making sure that we have that consistency, along with a lot of development on the pricing and billing side. This is important as a lot of our larger wholesale customers bring increased demands as they upgrade their accounting systems for that data feed.”

He noted that even with a lot of standardization on file formats, every customer has their degree of customization required and navigating that so it’s not so burdensome on Mirabito’s administrative team continues to be a focus.

“There’s a learning curve, just as with everything, but it’s kept us relevant and it’s put us into competitive position on some larger contracts. So, it’s definitely worthwhile, but it is a challenge.”

Moving away from the accounting side, Mirabito uses handheld technology  to enjoy the same “on the street” operational efficiencies with wholesale and commercial fueling as it does with home heating fuel delivery.

“The tenants are the same–being able to right-size those deliveries and increase efficiency,” Bunts said.  “There’s one gauntlet I still have–single-store operators. You still see faxes, because that’s all they have and often all they want. So, we’re only going to get so far with them. But we do have less technologically adverse customers where we are connected to their tank monitoring systems, and we have agreements in place where we treat them almost like an automatic delivery customer.”

He noted that this is also common on the residential heating fuels side, and it not only allows more stability for the marketer but it also allows customers to feel more comfortable that they’re not going to run out and that they’re going to have the supply when they need it. “It’s allowed us to, to increase our relationship with these retailers, and it allows us to right-size those deliveries and increase efficiency,” Bunts said.

For wet hosing/mobile fueling, the linkage to home heating fuel delivery is even more direct. Bunts noted that this line of business is seeing significant growth in certain markets, and aside from the on-board technology already noted, creative equipment utilization positions Mirabito to take a leadership position.

“I don’t need the types of expensive, ruggedized devices you might find in the harshest fuel delivery environments,” said Bunts. “Consumer-grade electronics can fill this need without pricing us out of the market. And that’s important. It’s the whole bring-your-own device model that we’ve been able to bolt on to this type of offering that allows us to get out there and do more market exploration.

See Part 2 Week for a Look at Mirabito’s tech adventures in store operations.