Pilot Flying J Takes Off with Infor Coleman AI & Machine Learning

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Infor, the industry cloud company, today announced that Pilot Flying J, the largest network of travel centres in North America, is using Infor Coleman Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) to help boost its fuel margin accuracy to 99.99 percent, which the company estimates could increase its revenues by $750,000 a year.

With more than 750 locations in 44 states and six Canadian provinces, Pilot Flying J’s fuel margins are particularly important, as they drive much of the bottom line and profit. If there is an error in fuel pricing at a location, the company can lose customers because fuel prices are too high, or lose revenue because the fuel is priced too low.

Previously, the company’s finance team spent five days a month closing the books and a sixth day making sure there were no errors in fuel margins. A one-penny error can have a significant impact on the business, according to David Clothier, Vice President of Finance, Treasurer and Controller for Pilot Flying J, because the company sells about seven-and-a-half billion gallons of gas per year. The process is streamlined now, allowing for easy deposit money to Aviator through improved accounting systems.

Clothier knew that there had to be a better way, and he envisioned using artificial intelligence, instead of humans, to look for errors. Because Pilot Flying J already had deployed an Infor multi-tenant cloud ERP system, he took advantage of its pre-integrated data, analytic, AI and ML services.

In just less than 90 days, Pilot Flying J’s AI application was tested, validated and operationalized. The Infor cloud ERP system calculated and updated data automatically – and anomalies were presented to the Pilot Flying J finance team in an Infor Birst analytic dashboard.

Instead of the finance team tediously looking at thousands of line items within a report, to check for fuel margin errors, the dashboard visually presents the few anomalies that need human investigation and resolution. And the dashboard helps the team answer questions quickly and accurately. Does the data make sense versus budget? Does it make sense versus last year? Are the trend lines okay?

Pilot Flying J anticipates that the Infor solution, by helping the company save time and improve fuel margin accuracy, will produce a number of financial and operational results:

  • With up to 99.99 percent accuracy in fuel margins, better pricing and supply decisions can easily add many basis points to the fuel margin, where an increase of 1/100th of one penny can mean $750,000 a year.

  • With Infor Coleman machine learning checking for fuel margin errors, Pilot Flying J can redeploy the equivalent of two full-time equivalents (FTEs) to other finance work.

  • The company anticipates a 1,000 percent return on investment (ROI), attributed to FTE savings, and a .001 per-gallon increase in revenue without procuring additional hardware, software or specialized skills.

  • Pilot Flying J also expects that the Infor AI & ML application will boost employee satisfaction, because employees will be able to produce more accurate data in significantly less time.

 

“We didn’t have to purchase any additional software to create an innovative service to deliver to our finance team,” Clothier said. “We leveraged the technology we already owned to solve a business problem. There’s very little incremental cost, so the ROI is fantastic.

“Infor brings to the table a suite of products that we think is as powerful as any ERP system on the market,” he added. “Infor is genuinely interested in serving our needs.”

Going forward, Clothier plans to use Infor Coleman AI to optimize Pilot Flying J’s workforce scheduling. Pilot Flying J discovered that the more data and feedback, which is provided, the better the AI results. Therefore, with detailed, time-stamped data at the item and store level, Pilot Flying J expects to predict the next 13 weeks of sales revenue, down to the department level, according to Clothier. These predictions will be fed into the workforce management system to optimize scheduling of the right employees at the right time of day.

To learn more about Infor’s enterprise artificial intelligence solutions, click here: https://www.infor.com/technology/enterprise-artificial-intelligence