FAMILY TRADITIONS AND NEW BEGINNINGS:

The Power of Innovative TechnologyBy Bill Stomp, Vice President, Digital Dispatcher

amily-run businesses can be pane to homes and businesses – cannot cling ordinate with everyone.

both a challenge to run and an to analog practices in a digital world. By quickly and effectively managing their

honour to uphold. Translation: Handwritten notes and guess- respective drivers; owners can issue tickets for

Indeed, the majority of work must yield to accurate, instantly accessible individual workers, modify their runs (depend-

such companies are just that: data and real-time intelligence. Owners need to ing on emergencies and other unexpected events),

Complex enterprises that have see – and drivers need to know – what to do, send drivers more tickets (if they need them) and

layers of operation and inherit- where to go and when to make their deliveries. streamline the entire process of customer service.

ed traits – a business has its own personality Or, the complexity of the past must not be- Best of all, owners can celebrate what theycustoms – that require a son or grand-

come the chaos of the present; a business with do not see: Reams of paper, and desks andandF

child to maintain a sense of tradition . . . and 2,000 clients, 20 years ago, cannot survive with floors littered with printed tickets and mis-

adapt to a rapidly changing marketplace. crumpled notes and missing papers in 2015. placed order forms.

I write these words from experience, where, Nor does an owner have the time to emulate A digital tool requires nothing more than a

in my role as Vice President of Digital Dispatcher, his father’s achievement, which, much to his digit, the tap of an index finger on the screen

I have the chance to meet with a variety of fam- credit and determination, is now virtually im- of a mobile device. It also means drivers do not

ily-run businesses – in the United States and possible to duplicate: Programming your own have to carry and unfold travel maps, stopping

Canada – at the forefront of transforming the dispatching system, with order tickets inked by to squint at meandering streets and nearly in-

propane delivery business for the better. a dot matrix printer, so there can be some sem- visible (to the naked eye) intersections.

Take, for instance, Max Kimlin of Kimlin blance of structure to a very busy office. Most importantly, owners can quantify the

Propane. He represents the third generation of Even with this system, confusion would power of this solution.

his family, to helm this business. be rampant; drivers would have had to collect For example: Last winter, one company’s

And, though he may have been born with tickets, printed by that then remarkable piece drivers delivered 25 per cent more fuel than

a surname that is familiar to more than 10,000 of daisy-wheel hardware, and compare them the year prior, a milestone during one of the

commercial and residential clients throughout with route cards, as they simultaneously – and most severe – and sustained – series of snow-

New York’s Hudson Valley, he knows a funda- often unsuccessfully – tried to calculate gallons storms and cold temperatures on record.

mental truth that is common to every family- of propane, to be delivered and billed to one of Those workers have different names, yes, but,

run business: Customers expect to receive the hundreds of clients. In many words: A mess. in the end, they bear the same name: Success.

same high-quality service Max’s father offered These owners are, however, fortunate to do That is the pleasure one enjoys with keep-

– and his father before him, Max’s grandfather, business in the era of smartphones and tablets. ing a family-run business alive.

established – when Kimlin Propane was a They are doubly lucky to have a solution, which That is the reason the propane industry

small outfit with a handful of accounts. streamlines everything, and allows them to co- – in America and Canada – will thrive.

(I cite Kimlin Propane because it operates

within a physical environment that is very

much “Canadian,” as the winters are quite

similar and the driving conditions mirror the

routes in any number of suburbs near Toronto,

Montreal, Ottawa or Vancouver. In fact, some

parts of the Upper Hudson Valley are just

100-something miles from the border between

the States and The Great White North.)

So, while I understand the necessity of

maintaining the values an owner’s forefather

cherished, including a commitment to excel-

lent service and appreciation for each client,

some things must change.

Specifically, family-run enterprises – espe-cially

those responsible for the delivery of pro-

March/April 2015

24 PROPANE CANADA