Meet Groupe EEA

Headquartered in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Quebec, Groupe EEA inc. is a multi-division operation anchored by Entreprises Électriques Angers and four other business units, spanning electrical contracting and emergency response across Eastern Canada and the northern United States.

It's not a nine-to-five business. When a major winter storm hits, demand spikes overnight. Crews mobilize within hours, trucks deploy across hundreds of kilometers, and fueling happens wherever the work takes them. Behind that rhythm sits a finance team tracking spend across multiple units, dozens of vehicles, and crews working in different jurisdictions.

As Director of Finance, Sébastien Girard makes sure the dollars hold up across all of it. He treats every cost line as an opportunity to find efficiency, and believes cost reduction is just as powerful a lever as revenue growth.
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The challenge: tying fuel to the truck, not the receipt

Before Fillip, Sébastien was looking for monthly fuel reporting at the truck level, which is the natural unit of cost for a fleet business. Cards assigned to specific trucks tended to get lost, so Groupe EEA had assigned them to employees instead. That kept the cards safe, but it meant fuel spend was tracked against people rather than vehicles, and reconciling the two took manual work.

"We wanted reporting at the truck level, but assigning cards to trucks wasn't practical for our team," explains Sébastien.

With 250 drivers and crews fueling at stations across multiple jurisdictions, the finance team was also looking for a cleaner way to confirm that every transaction tied back to a Groupe EEA truck. The reporting itself added to the workload. Each month, receipts had to be scanned and reports compiled by hand. For a finance team focused on analysis, the manual workflow was an obvious place to find efficiency.

Why Fillip

When Sébastien started evaluating fuel card and spend management options, a few capabilities tipped the scale toward Fillip.

• NFC tags that pair the fuel-up with the truck. This is the structural fix to the "card vs. truck" problem Sébastien had been trying to solve for years. With an NFC tag attached to each vehicle, every transaction can be tied back to the specific truck it belongs to, even when the card stays with the employee. Reporting finally lines up with the asset.
• Geotab compatibility. Groupe EEA already runs Geotab for telematics, and Fillip's integration means fuel data flows into the same system the operations team uses every day. Finance and operations work off the same source of truth, and questions like "did this fuel-up correspond to actual driving activity?" become straightforward to answer.
• Virtual cards on a phone. A card can be sent directly to an employee's mobile device by text in minutes - no waiting for plastic to arrive. For a business that mobilizes crews on short notice, this changes how fast new drivers can be onboarded and put to work.
• Universal acceptance. Crews can fuel at any station across Canada and the United States, with no restrictions on brand or network. When the work takes them wherever the storm is, the card travels with them.
• A clean, modern interface. The account is managed from either the web portal or a mobile app, which means Sébastien doesn't have to be at his desk to keep tabs on spend.

The NFC and Geotab pairing in particular was the piece that brought it all together.

"The NFC tags combined with Geotab compatibility are what got us there," says Sébastien. "We can finally tie fuel to the truck, the way it should have always been."

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The results: hours back, flexibility gained, one platform for everywhere they operate

Since rolling out Fillip, the day-to-day finance workflow at Groupe EEA looks fundamentally different. The team has reclaimed several hours every month that used to disappear into scanning receipts and assembling spreadsheets. Reports that used to require manual aggregation now run on demand, broken out the way the team actually wants to see them. But the time savings, while meaningful, are only part of the story. The bigger shift is operational, and it shows up in several ways.

• Cards in minutes, not days. When a crew is dispatched to a remote job site or a storm response, a virtual card can be issued and sent by text on the spot. There is no friction between the moment a driver is needed and the moment they are equipped to fuel up. That speed matters when the business model depends on being first to respond.
• Verified fuel, verified truck. With NFC tags doing the matching, the finance team can now confirm at a glance that every fuel transaction corresponds to a Groupe EEA vehicle. The data is structurally clean, and the team can move from reconciliation work to actual analysis.
• Manage from anywhere. Whether Sébastien is in the office, on the road, or working from another location, the account is fully manageable from the Fillip app or web portal. Approvals, card management, and reporting are all a few taps away.
• Fuel anywhere in North America. Crews can stop at any gas station in Canada or the United States. As Groupe EEA's footprint extends into US markets, that universal coverage means the same program scales with the business rather than fragmenting into regional workarounds.

Taken together, the changes have shifted how the team operates day to day.

"We've saved hours every month on receipts and reports, and we've gained flexibility we didn't have before, like sending a card by text to someone working remotely," says Sébastien. "It just works."

What's next

Groupe EEA is the kind of business that doesn't stand still. New business units, new markets, and new operational demands are always on the horizon. For a finance leader like Sébastien, having a fuel and spend platform that scales with the business is critical. One program, one source of data, and a partner that's willing to invest in the relationship for the long term.

That's what Fillip is built to be. As Groupe EEA expands across business units and into new geographies, Fillip will continue to deliver the foundational visibility and flexibility the business runs on, while evolving alongside the team to support whatever comes next.

See what Fillip can do for your fleet

Running a fleet that scales fast, runs hard, and demands cleaner data behind every dollar of fuel spend? See how Fillip can transform your fuel and spend program the same way it did for Groupe EEA. Request a demo or contact our team to learn more.