10 Years’ Association of JK Tech with a Leading Energy Supply Chain Solutions Provider

DotThe Client

The client is one of North America’s largest private companies and is an established leader in the petroleum marketing and fuel supply industries. Founded in 1957, the client provides comprehensive fuel supply, distribution, delivery, and dispensing solutions to customers through an integrated network of refiners, terminals, carriers, and retailers throughout North America delivering more than two billion gallons of fuel every year to clients throughout the continental United States.

DotThe Challenges

The client’s legacy systems and manual means to implement business processes were inefficient and occasionally faulty to address the ever-changing demand of fuel supply and logistics with the changing times. Improvising customer satisfaction and offering real-time visibility of mission-critical information was desired for proactive decision-making. The entire IT landscape demanded a revamp. The challenges faced across different technological areas:

 

  • Dot Net
    Earlier, the client was using a third-party Transportation Management System (TMS) to optimize freight cost and making route/shipment, which did not allow to track changes with accuracy which was affecting freight, supply and operations. In addition, there was no control over the master/transactional data update in the current system.
     
    The authorization and authentication were scattered across multiple systems and hence a single change would affect all the applications and made the process more cumbersome. The performance and scalability of the legacy desktop-based progress application needed improvement in order to fulfill the entire business need for all their trading partners to purchase and sell fuel.

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  • eFuel-Cut off Migration
    The client used another system called eFuel that ran on legacy technologies and has several drawbacks e.g. Implementation of a new business model was hard on top of an existing application, slow performance and bugs. Since the existing platform had too many business applications, the migration was planned in segments so as to not affect the whole business and keep running old and new applications side by side. It gave rise to another issue as invoicing and transaction processing spanned over multiple apps between old and new models. This was time-consuming for business as they had to do setups in both old and new systems and both the system required data and application maintenance.

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  • BizTalk
    The complex IT systems were based on a number of bespoke applications and enterprise technologies to run their various lines of service. They desired an interface with customers, vendors, partners and suppliers for seamless order processing and fulfillment through integration with all external applications, with ERP systems of customers, vendors and suppliers.

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  • MSBI-SSRS Reporting
    Single Reporting Portal was desired to ensure that all orders are visible and report categorization can be performed based on user’s preference such as accounting, sales, etc. while handling cross-reference of same master available in legacy systems.

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  • MSBI-ETL, Data Warehouse
    Mapping and migrating legacy data to Entinuum system, B2B network created to handle vast amounts of transactional and operational data shared daily throughout the energy sector.
    There was a huge volume of data in the legacy system and reports were generated based on the schema of the new system. Therefore, the legacy transactional and master data have to be transferred into that system so that data analysis can be carried out from a single source of data. Database Schema was different for both the systems so it was a big challenge to pull data from the legacy system and fit it into the schema of the current system.

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  • SharePoint
    MOC was looking for a collaborative platform where files and documents can be exchanged between various users of the department and their respective customers. In addition, the client was looking for a rich look and feel for their SharePoint on-prem portal with responsive design, to offer their customer mobile and tablet view. Another requirement was to access all their Reports, dot Net and Progress applications from a single location (SharePoint on-prem portal) with the single sign-on feature. MOC also sought a cloud-based solution with minimal development effort to support multiple databases (online and on-prem) for their few processes such as Order placement automation system, Onboarding system, etc.
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DotThe Objective

The client aimed at simplifying the fuel supply and logistics. They were acknowledged as a trusted partner for the organizations in overcoming their challenges of energy procurement, logistics and supply.

 

To maintain their leadership in providing an innovative solution for energy procurement, supply and logistics challenges they were seeking an IT services partner to keep them consistent and competent in the market.

 

JK Tech aimed at revolutionized their IT landscape and simplifying their fuel supply and logistics across North America by improving services, quality and cost-efficiency in the past 10 years and has been successfully providing flexible and agile solutions that are aligned with disruptions in technology.

DotThe Solution

The below solutions were provided for different technological areas for overcoming the challenges:

 

  • Legacy Modernization
    • Modernization of legacy Progress application (Fuel All) to web-based .Net application with the single sign-on (SSO), Authorization, Authentication (AnA framework) and service-based framework called Entinuum to fulfill DEF (Diesel Exhaust Fluid), LTL (Less than a Truckload or Tank Wagon) and FTL (Full Truck Load) business requirement.
    • Entinuum provided unified authentication, order entry, invoicing/billing interface for all their business models e.g. DEF LTL etc.
    • Developed an own web-based .net solution ‘Route builder’ to optimize freight cost and making route/shipment with the help of Microsoft bing map API. It helped the operations team to plan, schedule and dispatch the deliveries which are part of the shipments.
    • Developed “MOTS” a web-based .net generic solution to track changes that can be integrated to any application across the Entinuum.
    • Developed “Governance/Workflow” a web-based .net generic solution for effective governance and control over the Master data objects and transactional objects. It can be integrated with any process with minor tweaks.
    • Deployments of the new feature are smooth using CI/CD integration. The codebase is organised and maintained in source version control which was not the case with the legacy system.

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  • eFuel-Cut off Migration
    • Entinuum was initially designed for their new business Model called “DEF”. Later, LTL was migrated on this new system to take advantage of new functionality and smooth processing of transactions and invoices. Entinuum was built on the latest .Net technologies and has an easy path for up-gradation to the latest technology.
    • All the new features which were needed for the FTL business were not feasible on the old platform and were planned in Entinuum along with migration so as to keep one single system across the organisation for better performance, manageability and productivity.
    • FTL is the biggest part of the business model which is being migrated to Entinuum. Once all the apps were migrated, eFuel was cut off and all their transaction processing would be using the new platform.

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  • Service Oriented Architecture Based on BizTalk
    JK Tech developed an SOA-based BizTalk Scheduling engine called Entinuum information pipeline (EIP) to integrate different types of invoices/fuel order documents format with a diverse platform that was fully configurable by business users.

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  • MSBI-SSRS Reporting
    We developed an SSRS-based reporting portal to migrate the Legacy Crystal Report and create a new SSRS Report and Dashboards, charts and visualization.

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  • MSBI-ETL, Data Warehouse
    • A solution was provided as an extended arm with the MOC SQL team.
    • SSIS packages were created to read master data from Legacy into the new system for creating cross-references.
    • ETL was implemented for data flow logic to fit the legacy transactional data into the new system and eventually move it to the data warehouse.
    • Build cubes and power pivots on top of the data warehouse to cater the data analytics to business users.

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  • SharePoint Online Portal
    • JK Tech designed a responsive SharePoint on-prem portal with SharePoint 2019 multi-tier architecture, in order to develop a collaborative platform, with no configuration error including transfer of all old data and records without data loss and with zero downtime.
    • We introduced a security token based on the Single Sign-On process using iframe in SharePoint 2019 portal to access all MOC reports, DotNet and Progress applications from a single location.
    • SharePoint online portal was configured for MOC for their internal processes such as onboarding process, data sharing among company users, etc.
    • With the support of Power Automation and various connectors, gateways and graph APIs, we had used Power Apps to connect with various DBs and Office 365 users for the cloud-based automation process.
    • We have also integrated few external applications like Google Analytics, Chatbot, etc. for site usage reporting purposes and to provide real-time support to MOC customers.

Solution Architecture for Entinuum
 

Fig: Solution Architecture for Entinuum


 

DotThe Benefits

  • Automate Order Processing and fulfillment process.
  • Integration with all third-party applications.
  • Modernized the legacy platform.
  • Reduction in backlogs.
  • Improved operational efficiency of the business by 40%.
  • Improved customer satisfaction and user experience.
  • Significant improvement in value for money by utilizing JK Tech global delivery model.
  • The solution provided met all the quality standards.
  • The Solution provided a strong and secure IT and network infrastructure in a highly modern ODC.
  • There were significant improvements in software development processes and overall software quality.

DotHappy Customer

Mansfield Energy Corp.

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I have found JK Tech to be a professional and flexible partner in providing reliable, strong technical consultants and the associated resourcing processes which retain domain and application knowledge. JK Tech has proved to be a true partner who understands our business and our changing business circumstances. JK Tech has always been there and willing to share the risk to overcome each business challenge.

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