At Bluewave Energy, it’s all about incentives, as employees share in profits and are encouraged to come up with new ideas
Written by Martin Slofstra & Produced by Blair Dolson
The oil industry, with all its volatility, has experienced a number of fundamental changes. The major energy companies themselves have had to re-trench, focusing on core competencies such as drilling, exploration and refining, while letting go of some of their sales and marketing functions.
That has meant de-emphasizing, spinning-off or divesting themselves from their other activities, including distribution and customer service. Oil companies, by necessity, have come to rely on partners to provide these essential services.
Spotting this trend some time ago was long-time industry veteran Bill Sanford. Sanford had spent five-years with Emera Inc., where he devel¬oped the company’s fuel-distribution subsidiary.
Realizing the industry was changing, he sensed a huge opportunity to develop the cus¬tomer service end of the business. In 2005, the senior management team of Emera Fuels, and several other individual investorspurchased the company from its holding company- Emera Inc. They renamed it Bluewave Energy, accomplishing this feat with the blessings of energy giants such as Shell.
“They liked the way we did business, and it was very important to them that if they did sell, that we would grow the business,” says Lorraine Willis¬ton, Vice President Marketing & Human Resources and Founding Partner. “Shell decided the next phase was to sell some of their other businesses, and we started to buy and integrate some of their other fuel businesses from them as well.”
In 2006, Bluewave Energy purchased the Thermoshellbusiness in Ontario and Maritime provinces from Shell Canada. In 2007, it took another large step by acquiring much of Shell Canada’s petroleum delivery business in Western Canada and Northern Ontario.
Today, Bluewave is one of the largest inde¬pendent petroleum-delivery companies in Canada, with a presence in all provinces except for New¬foundland and Manitoba. It also sells into Quebec but does not maintain a presence there.
“We are very careful who we partner with from a business and cultural perspective,” she says, and the approach has obviously paid its dividends.
From its start in 2005, Bluewave has grown from 100 to 420 employees; opening 55 branch offices across the country, and increasing its annual revenue from $100 mil¬lion to $750 million.
The increased size helps it not only gain both efficiencies and economies of scale, but to add a “bit more control over the business and to develop a common culture.” The culture, by the way, is based on incenting people to work towards goals, and rewarding them when those targets are achieved.
“The culture is a winning culture. It’s a culture of work hard/play hard. It starts with our president. We hire good people, we hire for attitude, and we hire employees who are strong in customer serv¬ice,” she says.
“Our head office has to support our branch offices. We hire on the basis of serving, it’s also about sharing, and sharing success.”
Williston says the company has what can be described as “as a very loyal employee base. We have profit-sharing which includes a 100 percent of employees. That helps drive behaviour. And we have an employee share purchase plan even though we are a private company. As our com¬pany is successful, our employees gain besides being well compensed. We are in growth mode, and in 2008, everybody got their full bonus.”
The company also endeavors to implement continuous improvement whether it’s customer service, or any other aspect of its operations. “Employees enjoy that, and we like it when they come forward with new ideas.”
The company envisions further growth plans, fueled mostly by acquisitions made towards its dream of becoming one of the top oil distribution companies in North America. “We also have diversified our business quite a bit from a product line and geographic point of view,” says Williston.
As an authorized distributor of Shell fuels, it has quite a portfolio of services – and custom¬ers. It delivers furnace oil, diesel fuel, gasoline, lubricants, marine gasoil and heavy fuel-oil to homes and business such as farms, fishing vessels, trucking fleets, mines and oil and gas drilling rigs. It also sells, services and finances heating, air conditioning, water heating and fuel storage equipment.
It strives to be innovative in the use of tech¬nology and energy management services. For example, Bluewave Energy has a network of state-of-the art self-serve dispensers of diesel oil and gasoline for use by truckers. These cardlocks are easy to use and save time. They dispense oil 10 times faster than standard retail pumps, and users need to simply swipe their card and fill up- the billing is handled automati¬cally. The same card can be used at all locations on the Bluewave Energy cardlock network.
On the services side, one of its key offerings is Free Price Guard which provides consumers protection against the possibility of rising home heating oil prices. Regardless of market condi¬tions, Price Guard gives consumers peace of mind with the knowledge that they will never pay more than the pre-set maximum amount fortheir home heating oil during the season.
The oil industry faces considerable chal¬lenges, from the high costs of doing business, to volatile energy prices and to competition from new entrants. Partnerships, between companies such as Shell and Bluewave, where high-quality products are augmented by first-quality services, should prepare it well for the future.