Petrol Services Australia

“We used to maintain a ratio of two technicians in the field to one office staff member. Now we are working at 3.5 to 1.”

Peter Burton, State Manager Victoria and Tasmania, Petrol Services Australia

Petrol Services Australia (PSA) was established almost 35 years ago and has become one of the largest privately-owned services provided in Australia. 

The organisation offers forecourt solutions, covering all areas from design, installation, and maintenance for retail and commercial petroleum and LPG storage and dispensing systems, serving all major oil companies in Australia.
Originally established in Adelaide, and with the head office still located there, PSA progressed in to—and now holds major offices within—Victoria and Tasmania, then Queensland and Northern Territory, before spreading in to New South Wales and Western Australia in recent years. In fact, it was this expansion in to News South Wales and Western Australia that was aided by work Professional Advantage (PA) did with them. 

The relationship between PSA and PA initially began in 2016 when PSA made their decision to transfer their Dynamics GP support to PA. 

"We had been aware of PA through word of mouth for some time. We had had GP for maybe 10 years, but when we started to see some crack with regards to the work of our support partner at the time, we began to look around and do some research. From there, everything about PA was appealing and suited us perfectly." 
Peter Burton, State Manager Victoria and Tasmania, Petrol Services Australia

As part of this engagement, other areas of the business and what PSA were working on was discussed, which led PA to recommend, and ultimately implement, XMPro. 

"We had enlisted PA as our Dynamics GP support partner, but as our main GP contact at the time understood more and more of our business, they recommended that XMPro could be a good fit for a major project we were planning." 
Peter Burton, State Manager Victoria and Tasmania, Petrol Services Australia

An established solution for more than a decade, XMPro provides software and services for industrial IoT applications. It helps organisations improve operational excellence, reduce risk, and increase asset utilisation through its Agile Application Development Platform. 

PSA use Dynamics GP for their accounting and operations. However, this resulted in large amounts of paperwork, such as time sheets and data flow. Not only were they printing vast numbers of documents, but employees were required to come to a central location to collect and return paperwork. This process also meant that information was having to be transcribed system to paper, and vice versa, leading to data accuracy errors. 

"My job was to get rid of the paper! And to use technology to solve the problem." 
Peter Burton, State Manager Victoria and Tasmania, Petrol Services Australia

With mentorship from the XMPro team, PSA was able to develop their own digital processes on the XMPro platform. These solutions have helped them streamline their operations, improve compliance, and enabled their technicians to capture data on mobile devices whilst they are out in the field. PSA has also used predictive learning to eliminate some of the manual intervention. This boost to efficiency has ended up eliminating six jobs, but instead of losing employees, it simply enhanced productivity. PSA were able to take on new business without having to take on new staff.

As mentioned previously, it was the implementation of XMPro, and the subsequent change to work processes, that assisted with the growth in to New South Wales and Western Australia, markets that are extremely competitive in this industry. 

The team at PSA identify that it is the confidence in their technical competency that has played a key role in them being successful in tenders for larger works. Whilst XMPro is not the sole reason for this, it is the part that both the system and Dynamics GP play within their whole organisation and system setup that gives them an advantage over their competition.