How Rockgas Taranaki uses vWork to reduce dispatching by 60%
Rockgas provides LPG to homes and businesses around New Zealand. Built on a franchisee model, both the Taranaki and Wanganui businesses manage thousands of jobs each month in the region. As the business grew, dispatching the ad hoc delivery jobs was becoming more complex and time consuming.
Challenge
Streamline the administration associated with the delivery of flammable materials, whilst maintaining the highest safety standards.
Solution
vWork easily schedules ad hoc deliveries of highly flammable materials, captures job completion and integrates easily with Xero for prompt invoicing.
Outcome
Rockgas has reduced daily job scheduling time by a massive 60%, while being able to instantly and accurately invoice customers on job completion.

“After starting to use vWork, our dispatching team were managing their workload in less time than before - in fact they were 60% more efficient.”
Murray Corps
General Manager, Rockgas Taranaki
Building a business based on safety and service
Rockgas Taranaki and Rockgas Wanganui are busy small businesses delivering LPG bottles to homes and businesses in Wanganui and Taranaki, New Zealand and their surrounding regions. With thousands of customers on the
books, Murray Corps has a small team of 6 who manage the mostly ad hoc deliveries around the region.
With calls coming into the call center for deliveries all around the region, the dispatching team were always pressed for time. Not only did they need to pull together the daily delivery run including a docket for each customer, but they needed to pull together the specific instructions for each delivery site, especially if the driver was new.
Having an address is important – but having additional information to hand about where the bottles are stored on rural properties and holiday homes meant that the service delivery Rockgas customers could expect was always
100% reliable.
The other factor that made the dispatchers job more challenging was Murray’s insistence on managing risks. When driving a small truck with over 20 bottles each containing 45 kg of flammable LPG, Murray was aware of the importance of planning the route to minimize chances of a road accident – to keep both his staff and other road users safe.
For Murray, this meant always designing a delivery route that avoided crossing main highways and large roads and generally taking an clockwise route.
Rockgas’ continuous improvement focus
For Murray, safety and productivity go hand-in-hand. If they both couldn’t be achieved by one software solution, then it wasn’t going to be even trialed. As a self-confessed business process optimization enthusiast, Murray quickly
evaluated the options and adopted vWork Business edition in 2012.
The initial productivity gains achieved by the dispatching team were clear – and well received. Murray comments: “Our administration team gained extra time in their day – with the integration between vWork and Xero enabling invoices to be sent automatically within the hour of the delivery being made.”
But Murray could see there were additional opportunities for improvement.
vWork product enhancements drive further gains
Using vWork, the dispatching team were able to be more responsive to customer needs as well as increase the service reliability of both businesses. Saving time in the dispatching office resulted in a welcome reduction in staff costs. While this one-off cost reduction has long been banked, Murray was eagerly waiting for a key product enhancement – the introduction of health and safety management.
When vWork incorporated a health and safety function into the Enterprise edition, Murray began the process of implementing documented safety management into each job that his team does. The drivers now complete a pre-safety check on the truck and bottles prior to leaving the depot daily as well as completing a safety check at each delivery location. And finally Murray’s team use vWork to help manage commercial and residential location compliance certificates required by Worksafe New Zealand.
Since Murray started with vWork, other Rockgas franchises have come on board: “ I’ve always been involved with business systems – and I have become the go-to guy for vWork within the Rockgas franchise community. I’m always happy to share our practise with others so that everyone
can get the gains that we have. This is another plus
Reduction in daily job scheduling time
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“With vWork’s built-in safety functions, our people, customers and the general public are safer. It’s these kinds of features that make a difference – it’s easy-to-use and built-in to every job, which gives me the reassurance that we’re exceeding our safety objectives. ”
Murray Corps
General Manager, Rockgas Taranaki