Spreadsheets Costing Your Natural Gas Business Money?
For most Natural Gas companies, Excel is their first “enterprise software” for running the business. It is widely used, low cost, requires no special hardware or support and is a software application that “can be figured out”. How long a business will run on Excel varies – many smaller business owners have told me, “as long as possible”. Why this is the case is understandable, although knowing when operating your business on spreadsheets is impacting the bottom line and taking action are critical to business growth and profitability.
Those who have made the leap from spreadsheets to software purpose built for Natural Gas operations provide several reasons for doing so. “We outgrew spreadsheets” tends to be the summary statement, whose examination reveals business impact issues:
- Spreadsheets represent multiple data entry points – duplicate entries, data entry errors, cell equation errors and excessive data reconciliation across multiple spreadsheets are problematic.
- Worksheet integrity protection is a big problem – spreadsheets are a single point of failure.
- More spreadsheets increased the complexity of our business to the breaking point.
- Too much manual effort impacted productivity and the effects of human error caught up with us.
- We cannot afford to keep adding headcount because spreadsheets are so inefficient.
Those who offered one or more of the above, reconciled that a growing business reaches a point where spreadsheets start impeding growth and costing the business money. As one business owner put it, “Spreadsheets only capture data and accommodate calculations – they don’t themselves enable any of our operational processes – it’s all manual. Switching to real operations software, we now enjoy single data entry from front to back and have eliminated considerable manual effort – automating LDC data transmission is just one, albeit a big example.”
Moreover, with all the manual effort greatly reduced or eliminated, companies can apply more focus on the business and its growth. Instead of being limited by how many deals and enrollments are processed or missing margins on pricing models because of the lack of auditability, software gives business teams the peace of mind to know the data they are working with is current and accurate. That peace of mind permeates the business… knowing your P&L numbers are correct, your pool management is clear and automated, and all your LDC requirements are being captured and properly accounted for creates an organized and efficient environment.
The good news for companies seeking an affordable alternative to spreadsheets is that a purpose-built, fully integrated retail and wholesale natural gas operations software exists! It’s off-the-shelf and end-to-end in functionality. Its functionality spans all day-to-day business operations from the wellhead to the pipeline to the city gate to the meter. It houses all retail and wholesale operations data in one central repository, simultaneously accessible for all business users via a standard user interface, requires no IT management and has been in production for 20+ years.
Whether you are in it for the long haul, have reached the end of the road with spreadsheets or find yourself somewhere in between, engage us and we’ll show you how “graduating from spreadsheets” will enable competitive advantage that will drive book growth and reduction in per capita cost to serve. It’s what we do for Natural Gas companies and we are unique in our capabilities.
~ Ken
