Aces Power Marketing: Powerful Service
Energy Solutions
Written by Meghan Flynn   
Wednesday, 30 June 2010
Aces Power Marketing: Powerful Service
A strong internal training program and ongoing investment in technology helps this energy trading company maintain the excellent service its customers expect.
Premier Business Partners:

Industrial Information Resources, Inc.
Quinlan Marketing Communications
Aces Power Marketing president and CEO David Tudor said this energy trading and risk management company has a unique business model to reflect the unique needs of its owners and customers: 57 electric and natural gas clients across the US.

“We’re owned by 17 cooperatives that are in turn owned by thousands of consumers across the country, which means we only trade energy related products, not interest rates, stocks, or currency, and all of our trades are for hedging and not for speculative purposes,” he explained.

Aces Power Marketing: Powerful Service
David Tudor, president and CEO
Outside of major metropolitan areas, almost all energy utilities are cooperatives, he added, and they are uninterested in skyrocketing returns. Which is good, since it’s that focus on profitability to outside shareholders that is partially to blame for the failure of Enron and other major energy traders; Tudor said there are few big players in the industry anymore. The good news for APM, however, is that it’s been able to maintain steady growth through the global financial crisis and increasing volatility in the energy markets.

APM doesn’t even trade energy as APM; it doesn’t take title to any of the energy it buys and sells, instead acting as the legal agent for its owners and the 40 other energy companies that have hired it to handle energy trading at a lower cost and with more success than they could on their own.

“Instead of a focus on earnings that drives speculation, we focus on providing low cost, reliable energy and providing a high level of commodity management service for our owners and customers,” Tudor said.

With this model, APM is designed to grow slowly and steadily. Tudor said too many new clients every year would distract his team and dilute the level of service they are able to provide and their customers expect. All profits and service fees are reinvested back in the company to keep costs low, and Tudor and his team only seek to develop between three and five new customers each year.

To handle that, the company hires a handful of recent college graduates every year and trains them in APM’s processes and culture. This year, growth over the last decade resulted in a severe space shortage, so the company is in the process of expanding its 25,000-square-foot headquarters by another 15,000 square feet.

A young team
Tudor said training recent graduates has become a critical element of the company’s culture, saying it’s strengthened its mentoring program and fostered a collaborative, supportive, learning environment for all.

“By hiring recent graduates, we take on the responsibility of teaching them what a full-time office job is like but get the benefit of being able to build our own culture and maintain it as we grow by reiterating our values,” he said.

One example is respect and good citizenship. Tudor said most of the employees at APM’s headquarters work on the trade floor, and the company emphasizes moderated language and respect in what can be a stressful environment.

Collaboration is another key value at APM, which is evident through its mentoring program and its matrix organizational structure. Every year, the company reestablishes inter-departmental teams and assigns them service delivery objectives in accordance with the company’s strategic plan for that year.

A third key value at APM is communication. Tudor said each owner or customer of APM has a team of 10 or 15 employees who could call the firm with a question or request, and they expect a high level of responsiveness and service. Tudor explained the company’s mission is essentially the golden rule: treat customers the way you’d like to be treated by a service provider.

That also means, for the large amount of young employees at APM, adapting to the communication tools the company’s customers—well-established, rural electrical cooperatives operated by the previous generation—are most comfortable with. Even though they might be using instant messenger to make trades on the floor, they need to use the telephone, not e-mail, in communicating with owners and customers.

“It’s all about being sensitive to how they are most comfortable communicating with us, which again is linked to simply treating others with the same courtesy and respect we’d  expect,” said Tudor.

High-tech service
That dedication to customer service is also evident in APM’s ongoing investment in the latest software and technology.

“We don’t have any hard assets, just our building, our technology, and our people,” Tudor explained. “That’s why we invest so heavily in training for our employees, and it’s why we update all our systems every two or three years.”

In its headquarters and regional trading centers in Maple Grove, Minn. and Carey, NC, APM has six shifts of traders trading energy 24 hours a day, which requires reliable and fast data entry and transaction capturing software. It also requires a highly reliable trading control program to monitor how much energy can be traded, how far in advance, and at what dollar value. All this is monitored automatically by APM’s software system, and it’s imperative that systems stay online and operating perfectly.

So the company is in the middle of its continuous cycle of investment in software and technology to be sure it’s using the best-in-class tools to provide the best service.

“Our customers rely on us to provide a service, and our owners expect the highest quality service we can provide,” Tudor said. “We take that responsibility very seriously and are proud to continue to have our owner’s and customers’ trust in these trying times.”
 
Next Story >