How Bottomline extracts more value from Slump On’s data

Introduction

Slump On is a supplier of lubricants and renewable fuels to customers in the north of Holland, focusing on retail (fuel stations) and B2B customers such as transport operators and companies in the farming and agriculture industry who have their own fuel tanks..

The challenge

Frank Dijkstra, logistics manager: “In many cases we have access to our customer’s real-time supply data, and it’s up to us to plan and where possible combine deliveries. So the main challenge for us is to optimize route planning, while making sure we always meet our customer’s expectations.”

“One side-effect of the energy transtion is that our portfolio is getting more and more diverse, with different types of diesel, petrol, biofuels… Our tankers have up to 5 compartments, which means we can deliver different products on a single run. But from a planning perspective, of course, that adds complexity.”

Why Bottomline?

“We have our own planners, who used to work with a generic ERP package, but we recently started using Bottomline’s software. The main reason was that Bottomline showed us we could extract much more value from our data. They even built a simulation model to prove it.”

“In the new set-up our planners are still at the helm, but the Bottomline software does nearly all the preparatory work. It visualizes our options, and it allows our planners to look further ahead and work out smarter delivery routes.”
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The results

“We were impressed with the way Bottomline guided us through the implementation phase. We’re not a standard customer, and they were very good at listening to our specific requirements. Software companies sometimes struggle to deliver a solution that really works for users, but in the case of Bottomline you can tell that they have both software developers and planners on board. They know the planning side from a user perspective. They’re quick to recognize an issue, and equally quick to solve it.”

“The main benefit so far is that we are more in control. Perhaps in the old situation we could have achieved similar results in terms of optimal planning. But it would have taken much more time and effort. Working with Bottomline gives us a more stable, stress-free basis to work from.”