Billing, automation and transparency - Case study
Successful pilot project – SAP RFNO manages MTV Förster service station network
If the timing's right when partners happen to come together, they can establish a perfect symbiosis and have a chance of creating something great. In 2013, the Hanau-based SME service station operator MTV Forster decided to carry out a wholesale modernization of its IT systems. At the same time, a completely new, SAP-based service station solution was being developed by oil and gas software specialists Implico. The two companies soon established a rapport: as a pilot customer, MTV Forster was able to offer insights into all of the typical processes of a service station business, receiving in turn a tailor-made IT solution to match the company's own requirements. The project has now been successfully completed and SAP Retail Fuel Network Operations (SAP RFNO) has been used to create a packaged solution that redefines digital service station management.
MTV Forster GmbH & Co. KG is in many ways a typical mid-sized service station operator. The company operates a network of 28 service stations and carwashes in central Germany for the bft, Aral and Shell brands. The company also manages a further 18 service stations under its equity investment in FTB Freie Tankstellenbetriebe GmbH & Co. KG and is a shareholder in a federal motorway service station. The ownership models used here also reflect the usual market proportions: except for two service stations where it operates as a supplier only, MTV Forster uses the 'Company-Owned Dealer Operated' (CODO) model for all sites - i.e. it generally owns the stations, which are run by lessees. Accordingly, the company faces the kinds of accounting challenges typical for any service station network operator, namely: every sale needs to be analyzed, processed and reported on back at company HQ.
Data collection and classification: a service station network challenge
'The sheer variety of our business relationships is our biggest challenge.' explains MTV Forster's CEO. Lars Ebert. 'Depending on the location and product, our service stations sell a range of fuels (including LPG) for our own account, for third-party accounts and on commission.' Shop items are the property of the service station lessee, however, who pays a revenue-based fee to MTV Forster but receives commission on fuel sales in return. Things are made more complicated by the range of payment types accepted by MTV Forster at its service stations: cash, debit and credit cards, third-party fleet cards and the company's own MTV Forster fuel card. Payment streams differ by the payment type, too, since MTV Forster settles all card payments with the various clearing houses at head office - even the cashless transactions for shop goods, whose sales proceeds are ultimately owed to the lessees.
Lars Ebert sums up the overall system: 'At the close of each working day, we need figures for sales, revenue and profit margins, separate figures for shop revenue (and the resulting shop lessee fee), figures for earnings from card issuer clearing houses, figures for the amounts payable by service station lessees, figures for the amounts we owe our fuel suppliers and figures for the various commissions payable to and from the various parties. And all down to the last cent.' Since the diversity of these day-to-day transactions meant the company was approaching the limits of its former systems and a manual analysis and documentation process, it therefore decided to look for a new, efficient IT solution for the administration of its service station network. The solution needed to run on an established, future-proof platform and be able to model the complex workflows reliably, quickly and with a high level of automation.
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