By Bill Stomp, Digital Dispatcher
Based on the number of deservedly positive reviews for David Sax’s new book, The Revenge of Analog: Real Things and Why They Matter, including this write-up in the New York Times, one would think we should welcome this wave of vengeance; that we should celebrate this resurgence of “real things,” at home and at the office, because of the sentimental quality of the former and regardless of the potentially disastrous consequences of the latter. For it is one thing to have a collection of vinyl records—to enjoy the distinctive features of a hi-fi player, an appliance with various knobs and needles, and dials and wood speakers—while it is something else entirely to run your business without respect for new technology. Simply stated, we may have a fondness for analog products, but that appreciation can have ruinous effects in an industry dependent on real factors like costs, sales margins, revenues and profits.
Hence the unintended danger of Sax’s book: by encouraging readers to indulge in, or experience for the first time, the idiosyncrasies of the analog world—to popularize the tangible nature of hardcover books, for example, without also acknowledging the problems of having a business overrun with paper—is to endorse any and all things analog. For owners of propane delivery companies, I say, “At the risk of sounding like a broken (vinyl) record, you must embrace the convenience, speed and safety of the digital universe. Technology changes for the better, and you need to be ahead of those changes.”
I write these words not only as a former propane marketer and VP of Digital Dispatcher, but as a student of technology. I issue this statement as a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, with a degree in General Engineering, where midshipmen adapt to advances in aviation and navigation, equipment, stealth, radar, weapons and communications. Or, what I know as a veteran, I can see as a civilian: a landscape where Android smartphones and tablets dominate the way people run their businesses.
For propane delivery companies, that means the end of paper tickets, invoices and documents, a stop to the manual entry of delivery dates and times, and the removal of rows of metal filing cabinets and piles and boxes of memos, orders and receipts. That information, and much more, now resides in a device thinner than the width of a pencil with more computing power than a roomful of terminals from the glory days—the analog era—of NASA and the Apollo missions to the Moon.
It would be the height of folly for the propane industry to revert to the past because too many delivery businesses continue to struggle with the challenges of the present, an analog situation that only a series of digital applications can solve. Put another way, all that paper will not go away, all that confusion will not stop, all that savings will not happen and all that time-consuming data entry will not cease—unless dispatchers and propane companies have a modern means to monitor the location of their drivers, the efficiency or redundancy of certain routes, the status of deliveries and the overall productivity of workers and office personnel.
Analog products may appeal to our hearts, but digital services speak to our minds. They offer peace of mind, too, for an industry that needs to adopt new—and affordable—answers to old problems. These remedies only require us to touch, tap or swipe our way to the content we want and the contentment we deserve.
All praise the rise of digital.
Bill Stomp is the Vice President of Digital Dispatcher, which provides fleet management solutions for fuel delivery, fleet fueling and management of mobile workforces. Its solution combines route optimization, mapping solutions, fleet tracking, live inventory tracking, dispatch dashboards, real time fleet management tools and point of sale invoicing.
