by John Keller | Dec 17, 2012 | Fuel Pricing Software, Industry News
Convenience Store News Retail Technology published the following news story announcing Flyers Energy has selected PriceAdvantage for gas pricing strategies.
AUBURN, Calif. — Flyers Energy LLC has selected the hosted version of Skyline Products’ PriceAdvantage fuel price management solution for its Flyers-branded retail locations in California.
“PriceAdvantage allows us to automate our fuel pricing process while aligning our pricing strategy and improving communications across our network of sites,” stated Tom DiMercurio, director of accounting at Flyers Energy. “Our goal is to leverage technology to reduce operating expenses and to provide a means of tracking the implementation of price changes through the whole process. PriceAdvantage is allowing us to accomplish both of these objectives.”
PriceAdvantage’s SMART Fuel Pricing is a highly specialized retail fuel pricing solution for the convenience store industry. It is designed to maximize fuel profits by automating the entire fuel pricing process from the collection of competitive surveys, to sophisticated analysis for best price determination, to rapid speed-to-the-street price change execution with price change confirmation feedback, according to Skyline Products.
“Retailers are faced with many challenges in managing fuel price changes, including an inability to communicate or confirm price changes effectively and quickly between headquarters and the stores,” said Chip Stadjuhar, CEO of Skyline Products. “So, we are thrilled that Flyers Energy has chosen PriceAdvantage to manage their fuel pricing process as it eliminates execution delays with one-click fuel price changes.”
Flyers Energy franchises the Flyers fuel brand and distributes wholesale and branded retail fuel, commercial lubricants, renewable fuels and solar power in the United States. It is also the largest member of the Commercial Fueling Network and the marketer for more than 100 Chevron-, Shell-, Valero- and 76-branded stations.
by John Keller | Dec 14, 2012 | Industry News
OPIS reported this week that average retail fuel margins increased for the second consecutive week, rising $0.042 per gallon this week. Retail fuel margins are now at $0.240 per gallon.
The increase this week erases the loss in fuel margins seen the last half of November, resetting margin levels to those of mid-November.
All indications are that 2012 will finish with robust fuel margins.
by John Keller | Dec 14, 2012 | Fuel Pricing Software, Fuel Pricing Strategy
Everyone knows that GasBuddy provides rich content for gas station pricing in cities all across the US. GasBuddy makes it easy to view a list of fuel prices across a city and view the location of each c-store with its fuels prices.
But what fuel analysts may not know is that GasBuddy also provides a valuable “Trip Cost Calculator” tool on their www.gasbuddy.com website. This tool allows travelers to plan their trips based on a start and end destination, miles per gallon for their auto, and tank size. The tool then provides a Google map view of the optimal route with directions, along with the best location to stop for gas, and the current cost of gas at that location.
From a fuel pricing strategy perspective, this is yet one more motivation to integrate fuel price optimization software to GasBuddy OpenStore so that each time a price change occurs, the latest information is automatically posted to GasBuddy. This insures that your locations always appear on the GasBuddy map, with the most accurate fuels prices.
Mutual PriceAdvantage and OpenStore customers including Valero, Parker’s, Family Express and Rutter’s have already integrated their fuel pricing strategy with GasBuddy OpenStore. These industry leaders have proven they know what it takes to succeed in the fuel price management world, and how to leverage the best technology to win.
by John Keller | Dec 14, 2012 | Industry News, PriceAdvantage
“We couldn’t be happier that PriceAdvantage has replaced our previous fuel pricing solution. It is a superior tool in that it gives us the ability to pull historical data easily, manage multiple price changes per day, and provide a user-friendly interface at the headquarters and store level.” So says Stewart Spinks, founder of The Spinx Company and member of the Convenience Store News Industry Hall of Fame. The Spinx Company uses PriceAdvantage as their fuel price optimization software to manage all their c-stores across South and North Carolina.
“We needed a solution that would allow our managers to spend more time taking care of our customers instead of entering data that was already available through our POS systems,” adds Mr. Spinks. “PriceAdvantage has saved Spinx store managers an estimated 45 per minutes per day as they no longer enter volume or sales data. Additionally, we are implementing price changes faster and more accurately than ever as PriceAdvantage changes prices from the POS to the pump and electronic price signs with one click. We are extremely happy with our decision to install PriceAdvantage across our network of stores. PriceAdvantage has reduced the amount of time it takes us to respond to competitor moves as well as other market conditions.”
The PriceAdvantage team has established a strong partnership with The Spinx Company, as is typical of the relationships we like to establish with all our customers. These partnerships inevitably lead to ever improving features in the PriceAdvantage software. With Valero, it was heat maps, robust store and market performance analytics, and fuel price optimization. With Cefco it was powerful fuel pricing strategy business rules. With The Spinx Company it was a series of reports that provide business insight in numerous ways, and most recently the ability to text a store manager when a price change has been submitted.
The PriceAdvantage team is proud to have such a strong partnership with The Spinx Company, a partnership that leads to mutually beneficial ongoing improvements in the business at both of our companies.
by John Keller | Dec 12, 2012 | Fuel Pricing Strategy, Industry News
The Alternative Fuels Data Center of the US Department of Energy tracks the number of public alternative fueling stations, and the location of each, on their site here. The page includes public (not private) stations for propane, biodiesel, ethanol, electric plug-in, hydrogen, compressed natural gas, and liquid petroleum gas. According to the data as of November 25, 2012, here is the current rank order of each alternative fuel type by number of public stations.
- Electric – 5,059
- Propane – 2,421
- Ethanol – 2,264
- Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) – 536
- Biodiesel – 294
- Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) – 30
- Hydrogen – 10
From a fuel pricing strategy perspective, the fuel volume pie continues to shrink as traditional fuel demand decreases and alternative fuel demand increases. It is increasingly important to manage fuel performance at each region down to the market and even the store level. The traditional fuel price management game is not for the faint of heart, and only fuel analysts with the best fuel price optimization software can be successful.
