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B2B Heating oil portal
- Europe’s largest heating oil portal.
- Facilitate online trading of organisations’ own heating oil supplies.
- Added over €10 Million to the value of the company on day of launch.
Background
Petroplus are a €1 billion quoted company on the Netherlands stock exchange. They have operations in Germany, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Belgium and the UK. Trading mainly in heating oil, they wanted an online presence that could act as a marketing tool for the company and their products, as well as creating Europe’s first heating oil portal, becoming a one-stop information source for any organisation in the industry.
Objective
Petroplus looked to Imano to not only provide development services, but to actual help in deciding how to approach the project, and to review and ready the organisation to move into the world of online trading and communication. Their current systems were based on an AS400 system and they also used a number of excel-based applications on a day-to-day basis to help them trade in oil.
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Result
Petroplus were looking for this site to be hosted and managed out of Germany. Imano delivered a 1 day workshop in conjunction with leading consultancy firm Booz | Allen | Hamilton to outline the functionality, and a top level project plan for Petroplus. Key functionality delivered included:
- News and stock feeds from Reuters.
- Back-end integration with their AS400 system to allow users to trade, contract, and view their account system.
- Site built in German and English.
- Online forums and user-groups to allow interaction between users.
- Market opinion and updates from leading traders within the organisation.
- Real-time communication with traders and buyers via the Internet, using Instant Messaging technology.
- Online directory of the industry.
- Online database of tankers and storage units in Germany.
- Ability to marketing the company to customers and investors.
The new site launched within 3 months and added over €10 million to the value of their stock. The site quickly grew in popularity and became the leading heating oil portal in Germany, for end-consumers as well as Petroplus’s wholesale clients.
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"We had our first meeting with Imano on the Monday, and by the Friday they had a working prototype for us, we were even more impressed with the final site which they delivered in only 90 days, resolving any issues that arised with relative ease and ensuring at all times that what they delivered would work for us. I would not hesitate in recommending them to any organisation."
Marcel Van Poeke, CEO, Petroplus Oil
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