Energy Pinch Point Areas:

• Logistics
  • Bill of Lading and subsequent processes - opportunity for electronic standard? Ship Notice as a parallel transaction. 
  • Linkage of supplier to distributor tracking data
• Messaging Formats & Standards
  • Invoice
  • Pricing files - opportunity for electronic standard?
  • X12 204 message alignment to something else?
• Segmentation Mapping - differences based on product or customer?
  • Ag
  • Commercial
  • Consumer/home heating
• Regulatory
  • Fuel tax reporting
• Others?

All Slides will be present on the Wiki
Brent quickly recapped the previous meeting's discussion and highlighted pinch points

   

All slides will be included on the Wiki

-Priorities:
  High Value/low to medium effort
  Ability to implement quickly

-Considerations:
  Existing standards?
  Current state process documented
  Desired future state consensus

Feedback given so far is that the shipment notice/BOL information seems to be where most people suggest that there would be good value and quick implementation for standards

Ceres: top priority would be invoice processes (be it BOL or invoice), getting away from manual entry. The two biggest efficiency gains would be electronic receivers and electronic invoicing. Automation would be a huge efficiency gain. 
Co-Alliance: Invoicing is the most time consuming piece of all of it, getting things PO/PRd and into the system. A small part of our business deals in same day pricing, and when we buy from vendors it could be from several different vendors on the same load. How we do that as far as collecting that pricing is extremely manual. Something that would be able to electronically pull pricing in from different vendors would be a second priority
Key Cooperative: Invoicing and receiving of BOL/POs. The problem on the billing side is the massive wholesalers that we would have to work with to get them on the same page, but the BOL side seems like it would be easier. The second goal would be getting the wholesalers on the same page with pricing. Ann Vande Lune: The BOL and ship notice is the easiest thing to start with
Countrymark: I think we are getting the greatest value from hearing what the member cooperatives are needing. We are upgrading our operating system, so this is a good time to be bringing in a new platform. 
River Valley: The value is in hearing the discussion. 
Growmark: Invoices and orders are prioritized first. 
The Equity: The ship notice, and the pricing. I thought it was interesting that we brought up the motor fuel tax reporting last time because that seems like a giant beast to accomplish. We worked with AgVance these past two years and in some ways we have some level of automation with the state of Illinois and Indiana. We reached out to Co-Alliance as well. We are both in a current state where we are both reporting somewhat electronically. Maybe there's some work that has already been done there. Tax reporting is something that we are all responsible for doing, and we alleviated some of it recently with the help of AgVance. We made it easier. We didn't make it fully automated, maybe. Maybe that's something we can bring back to this group. AgVance: It's very state to state nuanced how much each state will work with us. We would have to keep in scope with what states will work with. Brent: I think there's an opportunity to reengage, but it's definitely tricky.

Brent: Are there any things that jumped out for allied providers that they would want to share from having implemented standards in another segment?
AgVance: There's a whole lot of good around getting organized around your first message, starting simple and moving to complex. 
EFC: I would say one area we might want to hit, especially with BOL that has come up a couple times with different projects, maybe if we tackle that we can make it energy focused but also look out for what other areas of operation this might work for. With motor fuel tax it really varies state to state, and they use special software for tax compliance. I would love to see a single format that wins it all, but I don't know that we would get buy ins on the other side. I don't think the state is interested in going to AgGateway, they're committed to their state format.
AgVantage: Bill of Lading and pricing are going to be the win for everybody. 

There seems to be consensus around BoL/Shipping, moving on to invoicing and pricing, exploring motor fuel discussions. 

Review of AgGateway standard message and process:

• Ship Notice
• Invoice
• Identification - locations, products, synchronization 
• Price Sheet (future call)

• Working Group process is reviewed
• Timeline is agreed to
• Requirements are understood and follow up conversations (if needed) are scheduled

Call to Action: Have we presented enough at this point to get consensus on the call that we are ready to move forward with building a group to tackle automated Bill of Lading? Or do we need additional conversations before we are ready to make that happen?
SSI: We would be very willing to participate
Key Cooperative: We are always ready to take on anything electronic to make life easier
Ceres: We're ready

Countrymark: We want to be a part of this, and we're ready to move into the small working groups to look at what this outline would look like. In principal, the concept makes sense. We've made investments in our operating system so we can more easily add some of these features to our operating system. It's a huge undertaking, but if it makes us more competitive in the marketplace, that's what buys investment
River Valley (Jean Bowel): I'm struggling a little bit to understand exactly the outcome within our business, so I think I would welcome a separate one on one conversation. We can always get better and be more efficient, so I'm curious as to how this would fit into the business. 

Next steps would be to get a group together and build the charter (the scope) of the working group. They're really tightly scoped and short duration projects. We recognize that there is a lot of coordination and volunteer time. We shoot for 8 to 12 weeks for a particular work package, and we get that scoped out and everything is reported appropriately for what is being done. AgGateway provides a lot of the administrative support to the working group to allow volunteers to focus on the work at hand. 

Rather than trying to schedule something for next week to put together a charter, Brent suggests scheduling 2 weeks out (week of February 8) for a call. 
   - Randy - In two weeks are we going to work on a charter and put a call out to anyone who wants to be involved?
    Brent: We would put together a call for participation that goes out to the mailing list or any stakeholders you would like to see involved. We'll work on individual outreach as needed. I would also, in that time, reach out to Jean and Belinda to have those additional calls to make sure that we're all on the same page and help document value and process improvement, and answer any questions they might have.
   Randy: Between now and then, customer or a retailer, if you have a trading partner you would like to get involved, give you a name to get an invite to? The partner needs to make a call and say you need to be a part of this and here's why. Now is the time to get them involved, and if you want more of your trading partners engaged now is the time. 
   Brent: The new process allows folks to join later on, but the ability to go back and do rework is limited, so now is the time. 

Randy: If we build this out in 12 weeks, when would you guys get that in your queue to take it to the retail level? Same question to the wholesaler side as well. Will it take six months? A year? What's it going to take to get this actually operating. In your best guess
   Pam Rincker- depending on the similarity of the other messages, it could probably happen within months. If we take off on our design a bit differently that could extend it. That's jut a really difficult question to answer. It would be correlated to the other messages we have done. 
    Greg Baldwin - It helps when you have the wholesaler on the other side working with you so you can do testing on both ends at the same time. It's going to be similar to SCPP, Nutrition, and other messages we've done already. Maybe six to 8 weeks to implement. We can start fitting it in as we see it coming. You need a retailer to speak up and say they'll work with you to pilot this, and then a wholesaler that's active to test it.  I would say the Call to Action is not just to participate in the working group, and the extension there is the willingness to work with us on a pilot. 

Randy: Brent, are there things to work on before that, that people would be thinking about? What we want to use as identifiers? What's already out there? Have that stuff ready to bring to the table when we start meeting?
   Brent: That was actually going to be my next question to the group. We've got two weeks between now and when we want to regroup to talk about energy. Would it be work trying to schedule a generic call about identification next week for this group and anyone else who might be interested? I think we have some resources where we could do some resources and a Q&A on identification and AGIIS in general. 
   Ann Vande Lune: It would be beneficial for retailers to write out their process flow so when we do go through this, they have some ideas on what the whole process is right now. One thing for the group to be thinking about is what is the lowest sellable unit on these things, and how are you going to identify them and bring them into your system?
Josh Wall: One thing to keep in mind, for some of these generic products there are commodity codes where there are used. I don't know if that's the case for the fuel industry. Keep in mind how these are identified today because it can be leveraged in the future. 

Brent will be reaching out today for when there can be individual conversations for those who requested them. 

Brent Kemp to send out to the group all of the flow charts and the slide deck used in today's presentation. 

 

Next meeting is scheduled for Thursday, February 4 9:00am Chicago time for identifier meeting