by John Keller | Sep 8, 2011 | Customer News, Fuel Price Management Solutions, Industry News, PriceAdvantage
At The Spinx Company, OPIS Radius reports are providing real-time competitive price imports that drive new fuel pricing strategy changes for 70+ stores. While Spinx Store Managers continue to submit their daily competitor surveys first thing each morning, the OPIS Radius reports provide additional competitive intelligence, allowing the Spinx Fuel Analysts to quickly respond to competitor moves throughout the day. The OPIS Radius reports provide data that Fuel Analysts can view in the PriceAdvantage dashboard, the screen in the software from which the Fuel Analysts initiate fuel price changes to the store. That dashboard is also where Fuel Analysts can see the confirmation time and date stamp of when the price change was automatically completed at the POS, sign and pump. The combination of PriceAdvantage and the OPIS Radius reports allow Spinx to get the right price to the right store at the right time faster than their previous email and corporate intranet system.
The Spinx Company formerly relied on MPSI, recently acquired by KSS, for their fuel price management solution. It was the ability to view OPIS Radius information in a PriceAdvantage consolidated view, along with volume, price history and current margin, as well as the roundtrip fuel price management automated closed loop process, that convinced the Spinx Company to implement PriceAdvantage at all their stores.
by John Keller | Sep 7, 2011 | Customer News, Fuel Pricing Technology, PriceAdvantage
High’s of Baltimore goes all out with PriceAdvantage at all 53 of their Shell and Citgo branded locations. Now High’s is changing prices with no human interaction at the store for every store in their chain. The Fuel Pricing team uses PriceAdvantage to review current competitor, volume, and margin information to determine the optimized price each day. Then from corporate headquarters, the Fuel Pricing team initiates the price change from PriceAdvantage, and with no human interaction, prices are changed at the VeriFone POS and pump. This process formerly took upwards of 5 hours each day, and now with PriceAdvantage, the roundtrip fuel price management process takes place every day in less than 1 hour.
by John Keller | Aug 24, 2011 | Customer News, Fuel Price Management Solutions, PriceAdvantage
Skyline Products is proud to congratulate Stewart Spinks, Founder and CEO of long-time customer The Spinx Company based out of Greenville, SC, for being inducted into the Convenience Store News Industry Hall of Fame. This Hall of Fame recognizes convenience store industry pioneers and innovators.
The Spinx Company uses PriceAdvantage for their enterprise fuel price management solution across all their stores. With over 65 stores, the Spinx Company is the largest privately held gasoline convenience retailer in the state of South Carolina.
The Spinx Company uses PriceAdvantage in conjunction with Skyline signs to manage the four-phase closed loop fuel pricing process from survey collection, to fuel price analysis and optimization, to pushing fuel price changes from headquarters, to fuel price change confirmation at the sign, POS and pump. Stewart Spinks personally uses his PriceAdvantage fuel pricing software daily to monitor competitor changes and to push fuel price changes to each of his stores.
by John Keller | Aug 12, 2011 | Customer News, Fuel Pricing Technology, PriceAdvantage
“Now that we have PriceAdvantage rolled out to all our 70 stores, I can change gas prices any time of day or night!” That was the feedback we just got back from one of our PriceAdvantage c-store customers in the Southeastern US.
Prior to using PriceAdvantage as their fuel price management solution, this well recognized c-store chain could only effectively change gas prices once a day. They would start the gas price change process by sending an email out to all stores. Only the store manager had the managerial code required to change gas prices, so that meant if there was no manager onsite, there could be no gas price change.
Now with PriceAdvantage, the Fuel Price Management team can change gas prices whether the store manager is there or not. The Fuel Price Manager sets the new gas price in the PriceAdvantage software, and automatically the price change appears at the store. Any cashier can click the accept gas price change button on the POS, the price change completes at the store, and the PriceAdvantage headquarters software is automatically updated with the completed price change confirmation time stamp, letting the Fuel Price Manager know that the gas price change is complete.
Now that there is no reliance on the store manager, they are changing gas prices at all hours of the day, sometimes multiple times a day. And that’s what they say makes PriceAdvantage so valuable.
by John Keller | Aug 10, 2011 | Fuel Price Management, Fuel Price Management Solutions, Fuel Pricing Strategy, Industry News
Fuel Price Managers should base their fuel pricing strategies on the general consensus that retail gas prices will continue to drop through the rest of 2011.
USA Today picked up a story from the New York Times, proclaiming that gasoline prices are sure to continue to drop. The article predicts that next month, the national average for Regular Unleaded could drop to $3.25/gallon. That would be over $.40/gallon less than today’s national average. A spokesman from NUS Consulting, the often quoted specialist firm in energy sourcing, risk management and sustainability, was quoted as predicting that crude will fall from today’s price of $82 to between $55 and $60 before finishing the year at $70.
UPDATE 8/12/11 The Los Angeles Times published an article saying “motorists should see pump prices drop as much as 50 cents a gallon over the next several weeks…”.
Today’s US Energy Information Administration Short-Term Energy Outlook projects Unleaded fuel price national averages to drop $.09/gallon in the 3rd quarter of this year and reach $3.58/gallon; predictions for the 4th quarter include an additional $.14/gallon drop to reach $3.44/gallon. That’s about $.06/gallon lower than what the US EIA published last month. On August 8th, the US EIA announced the national average for Unleaded was $3.67/gallon, a $.04 drop from the previous week.
Fuel Price Management strategies should include consumer expectations that fuel prices will fall.
