With sales volumes frequently exceeding three billion cubic feet a day, Natural Gas Clearinghouse takes a strong commitment to personnel and computer systems to handle all the associated data. The Gas Scheduling staff includes four regional managers, fourteen coordinators, five scheduling analysts, and three administrative analysts, who are needed just to keep up with internal reporting requirements.
Internal Communication, Coordination Requires People and Money
The fourteen coordinators are the front line of our day-to-day business. They function as the key person for each of their assigned pipelines, being the primary gas control contact for their counterparts with the pipelines, markets, and suppliers. They work closely with NGC's gas buyers and marketers and ensure coordination between the other regions within the company. They are responsible for nominating the gas and tracking the volumes, prices, and transportation rates in our computer system. Their work is used to create the invoices to NGC's markets and the payables to the pipelines and our suppliers. These fourteen people have averaged thirteen thousand nominations a month.
Thus, internal communication is not simple. Information received from any person that the coordinator interacts with may result in the necessity to communicate the impact to several other parties. If any person is left out of the loop, mistakes are made and the business suffers. It has been a priority at NGC to make this communication process as efficient as possible by eliminating redundant or duplicate tasks and by making the communication of information a priority. If we have poor communication and coordination, we do not uphold our responsibilities, we do not perform our duties, and our reputation and revenues suffer.
Concentrated on Better Systems
A few years ago, as we saw our sales volumes and the workload associated with them increasing at rates greater than we could anticipate, we had a choice. We could hire more people or build better computers. Our volumes did not gradually get to where they are today: They took great bounds each year as we