by John Keller | Nov 1, 2011 | Customer News, Fuel Pricing Software, PriceAdvantage
Valero Retail Holdings, Inc., Valero Energy Corporation’s network of company-owned stores, has selected PriceAdvantage Fuel Price Management Software to manage and control retail fuel pricing for their one thousand Corner Store locations.
Long known for innovation and leadership in the Retail Petroleum Marketing industry, the Valero Corner Store team created their own in-house pricing application over 10 years ago. That application is approaching a technology end-of-life for the database. “We have been very successful with our own home-grown fuel pricing software, but it is time for us to add new functionality. After evaluating all available market solutions, we were pleased to find PriceAdvantage,” said Brian Skillern, Director of Fuel Transportation.
PriceAdvantage Fuel Price Management Software is a highly specialized retail fuel pricing solution for the Convenience Store industry. PriceAdvantage provides automation for the entire fuel pricing process, from collection of competitive surveys, to efficient and detailed analysis for best price determination, to rapid speed-to-the-street price change execution. It is this ability to change prices immediately at the Point of Sale, pumps and electronic price signs from the centralized headquarters location that makes the solution unique in the industry.
Aaron McHugh, Division Director says, “Valero is a best-in-class petroleum marketer, and we are excited to welcome Valero’s company-owned retail division as a customer and partner. Over the years we have assembled a team of software experts who are hyper-focused on creating easy-to-use and easy-to-deploy automated fuel pricing solutions. We are passionate about Fuel Pricing Software and we are pleased that Valero has recognized our system as the industry leading solution.”
Skyline Products, Inc. located in Colorado Springs, CO Skyline Products, Inc. has been delivering Enterprise class software solutions for over fifteen years. PriceAdvantage was birthed in 2005 in response to Retail Petroleum customer’s needs for remote price management from headquarters. In addition, Skyline Products, Inc. is involved in other vertical segments delivering both hardware and software solutions. Throughout America’s highways you will see both our Transportation (Intelligent Traffic Systems) and Petroleum (Electronic Gas Price Displays) solutions. Each industry is controlled with behind the scenes enterprise software solutions. For more information please visit www.skylineproducts.com or www.sellmoregas.com.
Valero Energy Corporation, through its subsidiaries, is an international manufacturer and marketer of transportation fuels, other petrochemical products and power. Valero subsidiaries employ approximately 21,000 people, and assets include 16 petroleum refineries with a combined throughput capacity of approximately 3 million barrels per day, 10 ethanol plants with a combined production capacity of 1.2 billion gallons per year, and a 50-megawatt wind farm. Approximately 6,800 retail and branded wholesale outlets carry the Valero, Diamond Shamrock, Shamrock and Beacon brands in the United States and the Caribbean; Ultramar in Canada; and Texaco in the United Kingdom and Ireland. Valero is a Fortune 500 company based in San Antonio. Please visit www.valero.com for more information.
by John Keller | Oct 26, 2011 | Customer News, Fuel Price Management, Fuel Price Management Solutions, Fuel Price Optimization
CEFCO Convenience Stores has grown by approximately 60% this year. According to Brett Giesick, Chief Retail Officer quoted in today’s article in Convenience Store News, the reason why Fikes is able to grow so successfully is because of “having the right infrastructure.” Specificallly, Giesick cites their operations, marketing, and support teams for allowing CEFCO to achieve their planned growth.
The PriceAdvantage Fuels Price Management Solution is a key part of the infrastructure at CEFCO. Giesick and his team of Territory Managers use PriceAdvantage to carefully monitor the fuels volume sales of each store according to the latest daily import from PDI, compare it to fuels volume targets in a view with the latest competitor pricing trends, and from the same view send new fuel prices to each store. This allows CEFCO to execute fuel price changes according to their fuel price strategies in a fraction of the time it used to take with the fuel pricing solutions they had before PriceAdvantage.
True fuel price optimization can only be achieved through well executed fuel price strategies across the entire enterprise. And with PriceAdvantage, CEFCO is able to optimize their fuel prices, optimize fuel profits, and achieve their growth plans.
by John Keller | Oct 26, 2011 | Customer News, Fuel Pricing Technology, PriceAdvantage
Today one of our PriceAdvantage customers had a key question they needed to answer: “Who made that price change?” Late last night during the third shift someone changed the fuel price at the store. Was it an authorized price change, or was someone trying to get away with something?
PriceAdvantage keeps a complete audit trail of every price change at every store, making it easy to see who initiated every price change throughout history. In mere seconds the fuel pricing team could see that the price change was initiated at the store, and wasn’t authorized by headquarters.
Store Managers quickly learn that when PriceAdvantage is handling fuel pricing, there are no more chances for “Friends and family hour.” And that’s one of the key ways to reach true fuel price optimization.
by John Keller | Oct 10, 2011 | Customer News, Fuel Price Management, Fuel Pricing Software, PriceAdvantage
CEFCO Convenience Stores announced they have acquired two more c-store sites, this time in Collinsville and Marion Mississippi. This purchase follows on the heels of CEFCO’s acquisition of 69 stores in August. Once this acquisition is complete, CEFCO will operate a total of 194 convenience stores throughout Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas.
CEFCO uses PriceAdvantage fuel price management software solutions to handle all their retail fuel pricing. CEFCO also has Skyline electronic gas price signs that complete the closed loop fuel price management cycle from surveys, to fuel price optimization, to fuel price execution, to confirmation. The CEFCO PriceAdvantage implementation includes integration with VeriFone and Gilbarco POS systems, as well as their PDI system.
by John Keller | Sep 30, 2011 | Customer News, Fuel Pricing Software, PriceAdvantage
According to OPIS Market Share and Efficiency Score Retail data for Q3 2011, PriceAdvantage fuel pricing software solutions customers are industry leaders across multiple categories.
The list of convenience stores with the highest efficiency ratings include longtime PriceAdvantage customers Sheetz and Royal Farms. The efficiency rating compares fuel volume market share to number of retail outlets.
In the Mid-Atlantic region, Sheetz was one of three brands with efficiency ratings of over 3.0, and in the top five for fuel volume market leaders. Sheetz also scored highly in the efficiency rating in the Southeast region, with the second best score of 5.64. In the Great Lakes region, Sheetz had the highest efficiency rating of any fuel retailer.
PriceAdvantage Fuel Price Management software is a key reason why industry leaders are able to get their optimized fuel prices to the street in less time and with less error, getting the right price to the right store every time.
by John Keller | Sep 21, 2011 | Customer News, Fuel Price Management Solutions, Fuel Price Optimization, Retail Fuel Margins
Rutter’s has been using PriceAdvantage as their fuel pricing solutions for four years. Rutter’s uses PriceAdvantage on a daily basis to analyze store volume and margin performance, along with competitor movement, to determine the optimized prices at each store. Then fuel managers initiate fuel price changes from their headquarters office. in conjunction with their Skyline electronic price signs and Radiant Point Of Sale systems, PriceAdvantage pushes the new prices to each store, and sends back a confirmation message to headquarters once the price change is complete at the POS, electronic price signs, and pumps.
As part of their upgrade to PriceAdvantage version 3.4, Rutter’s has extended their PriceAdvantage fuels solutions to GasBuddy OpenStore, allowing them to update the GasBuddy site with up-to-the-minute gas prices whenever the PriceAdvantage automated fuels pricing system confirms the price change as completed. With this GasBuddy integration, Rutter’s has essentially extended their retail fuel price marketing, allowing PriceAdvantage to command and control fuel prices beyond the physical electronic gas price signs, to virtual signs on the Web.
