Warmth and Light: Selecting the Right Mobile Device (App) for the Heating Oil Industry

By Bill Stomp, Digital Dispatcher

The home heating oil industry is a friend of technology.

The question, however, is: Are the software developers of mobile devices an ally of our colleagues in the fuel business?

The answer to that query is, by and large, a negative one.

To be clear: I do not mean to suggest – and I have no reason to accuse – designers and programmers, many of whom work remotely and operate overseas, of intentionally producing inferior applications that either try to do too many things (and none of them well), or releasing services riddled with coding errors and no system of support.

What I do believe is that if a company plans to create, market and attempt to sell an application for Apple or Android smartphones and tablets (or any other mobile device), the people responsible for that tool must know the home heating industry very well.

And secondly, whatever an application purportedly does – and it should do no more than two big things with ease – users must be able to master this resource with simplicity.

Problems arise because, and here I write from experience in my role as Vice President of Digital Dispatcher, where, for purposes of full disclosure, I have many clients in this industry; and those customers, themselves readers of Fuel Oil News, are not abstractions;

they manage family-run businesses – their respective buyers are fellow neighbors and merchants within the community – where there is no room for error.

Put another way, these people are not numbers on a monochromatic display for some spreadsheet or P&L statement; they are men and women, friends and coworkers, who need technology to enable a driver, a local representative somewhere in suburban Philadelphia or elsewhere in New York’s Hudson Valley, to heat a family’s home . . . without delay!

That scenario should reinforce my initial assertion about the divide between a software developer in Manila and a home heating business in Manhattan. It is hard, in other words, to appreciate the urgency of this matter when it is 80°F outside a programmer’s office and 15°F outside a user’s vehicle.

My claim aside, this discussion can be reduced (by heating oil companies) to a straightforward question (for developers of mobile applications worldwide): How well do you know our business?

Does your team understand the culture and economics of this industry?

And, with all due respect for the power of Skype and the many interactive virtual tours of a fueling center or dispatching office, knowledge begins with braving the elements, driving those country roads and learning the mechanics (and chatting with the mechanics) of a business that is often helmed by the grandson or great-great nephew of an owner whose name – and heritage – continues to this very day.

Fueled by Knowledge: A Smart Plan for Real-Time Intelligence

These points also contain a universal lesson about the successful adoption of new technology.

The principle is clear: While “build it, and they will come” reads like an inspired piece of philosophy, it is, in fact, the epitaph of many a failed business.

Nowhere is that comment more relevant than among the vendors and clients referenced in this column.

For, though I can confirm that there are plenty of heating oil companies in New England, the Mid-Atlantic and in the northern half of the United States, every owner is, in the end, from Missouri; each one is, intellectually, a resident of “The Show Me State”; that individual demands, and has every right to receive, proof that a product or service works as advertised.

That rule transcends any one industry, and is a guide to all industries.

Its validity rests on craftsmanship, albeit of the digital kind, where so many ones and zeroes perform a specific function.

The details, not to belabor the obvious or mix metaphors from different trades, are like the threading of a bespoke suit or the symmetry of a finely calibrated engine; they have the fit of – and provide a feel for – excellence.

That is the way to build an application for the home heating industry.

Bill Stomp is vice president of business development for Digital Dispatcher. He can be reached at billstomp@digitaldispatcher.com