Illustration: what "modeling the actual business" means for Boucher & Jones fuel distribution (in-development, NOT delivered)
⚠️ Frame carefully in any public writing: Boucher & Jones CRM is in development as of May 2026, NOT delivered. No outcome claims.
The illustration: Generic CRMs (Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive) model "a customer is a company with contacts and opportunities." That's wrong for fuel distribution. The actual model:
- A customer owns or leases tanks (assets with serial numbers, capacities, install dates, inspection histories — and ownership chain matters)
- A customer has sites (often multi-site commercial accounts where each site has its own delivery cadence)
- A customer has fuel-type contracts (heating oil, diesel, propane — each with its own pricing logic, regulatory regime, seasonality)
- A customer has delivery modes — will-call vs automatic (degree-day-driven) vs emergency, operationally distinct with different routing, pricing, customer expectations
- A customer has payment terms that are often customer-specific (Net 15 with one industrial account, COD with a price-sensitive residential customer)
A generic CRM forces this model into Account/Contact/Opportunity/Deal — losing the entire structure that makes the business the business. The B&J CRM is being built to model these directly. The point is not to praise the build; it's to illustrate "modeling the actual business" versus "bending the business to the software."
Why custom rather than vertical fuel SaaS (Manage Petro, PDI, RR Fuel, DRM, Cargas Energy, etc.)? The B&J build-vs-buy decision is itself worth interrogating. Vertical fuel ERPs are full ERPs with multi-year deployments and high lock-in; B&J's scale and operational specifics may justify the custom layer. Most operators in B&J's position default to one of the vertical ERPs — that's the safer call and shouldn't be undersold.
For Candid public writing about this: use as ONE paragraph of illustration of the concept. Do not present as a delivered case study with outcomes.