by John Keller | Jul 23, 2013 | Customer News, Fuel Price Management Solutions
The PriceAdvantage team would like to offer our congratulations to Rutter’s for opening their newest location. The newest store is the largest in the Rutter’s chain, and brings the Rutter’s total store count to 58.
Rutter’s has been a long time PriceAdvantage customer, using the patented fuel pricing technology from Skyline to manage retail fuel price changes from Rutter’s headquarters to the NCR (Radiant) POS, pump, and Skyline electronic price sign. Rutter’s was an early adapter of the PriceAdvantage integration to GasBuddy OpenStore in 2011.
Scott Hartman, CEO and President of Rutter’s was inducted into the PCATS Hall of Fame in March of this year in recognition of his industry thought leadership. We look forward to our ongoing partnership with Rutter’s, and the mutual success and growth it continues to bring.
by John Keller | Jul 19, 2013 | Fuel Price Management Solutions, Fuel Price Optimization, Fuel Pricing Software, Fuel Pricing Strategy
The ability to make one-click price changes at all retail fuels locations is critical when optimizing fuel prices because it reduces the potential for human keying errors, streamlines the overall fuel pricing process, and ensures maximum fuel profitability. Retail fuel managers frequently face the frustration of not being able to react quickly enough to changing market conditions. Interference, be it from technology or the environment, can hold back price changes, and prevent the optimized prices from reaching the street. By the time the prices do change, it may be too late, as the competition has already leapfrogged to a new price based on newer market fluctuations.
A centralized process for managing fuel price changes to all locations removes the store manager from the loop and increases speed-to-the-street. Tracking and analyzing fuel prices can now be done by a fuel analyst at headquarters giving store managers more face time to interact with customers. By leveraging technology and improving traditional company processes, these overburdened store managers can be freed up to oversee tasks within the store, more effectively handle store operations, and provide better customer service.
The ability to automate fuel price changes at the POS, fuel pumps, and electronic price displays is one key differentiator between the patented PriceAdvantage SMART fuel pricing software solution and other solutions in the industry. The ability to immediately execute price changes within a region, location, or market means you have the right strategy prices in place at the right time to offset your competition. Traditional fuel pricing models relay fuel price changes gradually from one channel to another, allowing for interruptions, miscommunication, human error, and delay after delay. Removing store managers from the critical path eliminates these delays by creating a direct channel from pricing to implementation.
The patented PriceAdvantage SMART fuel price management solution provides analysis of the competitive landscape and a complete picture of the optimal prices in each market. Then fuel managers can use PriceAdvantage to automate the entire fuel price change execution process, including price change confirmation at the POS, sign and pumps, to maximize overall fuel profitability. PriceAdvantage provides a complete picture of the playing field, allowing fuel managers to attain true fuels price optimization day in and day out.
by Grant Garrison | Jul 12, 2013 | Fuel Price Management, Fuel Price Management Solutions, Fuel Price Optimization, Fuel Pricing Software
The key to an effective fuel price management system is total integration between all channels which gives managers the ability to set optimal prices for each region with maximum ease. To enable this premium level of command and control, retail fuels companies need to follow several strategies for productive price management. As a quick reference guide, the fuel price management experts at PriceAdvantage have compiled a list of 4 strategies for fuel price command and control.
1. Mobile Integration
Relying on outdated technology to keep track of price changes is an unsustainable practice. It’s worth making an investment in new technology considering the degree of additional control and flexibility it provides. Mobile technology, such as Smartphones or tablets, allows fuel managers to enact immediate price changes from anywhere. Mobile integration ensures that fuel managers will receive automatic alerts when surveys are overdue, price changes are late, or whenever any channel interruptions occur. By integrating their fuel pricing software with mobile technology, fuel managers can save time and stay informed of competitor price moves.
2. Tracking with Technology
Using fuel pricing software to manage and optimize fuel pricing is straightforward when managers apply professional software. Technology can provide complex, actionable outputs from records on competitor pricing history, c-store price history, historical fuel costs, and fuel volume history and targets. It’s not enough to make sure software is accessible from anywhere. The right fuel pricing tool will also provide automated tracking for the entire delivery cycle. A fuel price management system should track each and every process from collection of surveys to price changes, showing users where opportunity losses are occurring, and increasing speed-to-the-street.
3. Forecasting trends
Forecasting trends in the fuel pricing market shouldn’t be based on hunches, but on precise economic models developed by industry experts. An efficient model should apply top-notch analytics based on historical fuel prices, and make an educated evaluation of arising patterns from this past competitive landscape. Forecast modeling places control in the hands of those who understand the data best.
4. Pricing Optimization
An integration of the three strategies listed above will lead to total fuel pricing optimization. Continual automated monitoring, notifications of service interruptions, technology integration, well-crafted pricing models and daily confirmation alerts are vital for an efficient fuel price management system. However, these tools become less effective if they do not allow the analyst to obtain results based on a selected period of time. Analysis and optimization economic models must provide results based on varying historical references in order to accommodate market changes caused by seasonal demographics, and varying competitor influences. Always apply the latest technological solutions, with total report customization control, to gain the greatest advantage over the competition.
These are four indispensable strategies available to managers for maximizing fuel pricing command and control. By incorporating this type of approach into your fuel operations and continually seeking new upgrades to internal processes, you can be certain that your fuel price management system is keeping you ahead of the competition.
by John Keller | Jun 28, 2013 | Fuel Price Management, Industry News, Retail Fuel Margins
According to the latest OPIS report, retail fuel margins across the USA had a strong recovery this week, increasing $0.075 gallon to an average of $0.274 per gallon. Average retail fuel margins across the USA are now the highest of the year.
The year to date average retail fuel margin now stands at $0.177 per gallon, while the Q2 average retail fuel margin is $0.191 per gallon. The six week average jumped $0.025 per gallon to reach $0.197 per gallon. The month of June finished strong, with an average retail fuel margin of $0.210 per gallon.
From a fuel management perspective, these are critical benchmarks to use as a comparison for your own operations. When analyzing options for fuel management software systems, the question to ask is, “how difficult is it to access this information for my own comparisons?”. PriceAdvantage fuel software provides rich analytics to quickly slice and dice margin information for individual stores, markets, and the overall enterprise, out of the box, with no database expertise required.
by John Keller | Jun 11, 2013 | Fuel Price Management, Fuel Price Management Solutions, Fuel Pricing Strategy, Fuel Software, Industry News
In the NACS State of the Industry Summit there were several key fuel management highlights for the 2013 year.
- Gasoline consumption is up 1.3% year over year.
- Gasoline margins are up 3.6 cents per gallon for the first 12 weeks of 2013 year over year.
- Gasoline margins were at 16.6 cents per gallon for the first 12 weeks of 2013.
- The breakeven cents-per-gallon for last year improved to 9.21 cents, a 12% improvement.
From a fuel price management perspective, it is important to compare the results in your markets to these national industry standards. Perhaps individual markets are particularly competitive with margins and cannot match some of these statistical levels, but these industry standards provide a gauge and set of key performance indicators to use for measuring success.
Using these measurements as the basis to generate reports to reveal the success of your fuel organization can be time consuming if your fuel software is based on Excel. Even the most sophisticated homegrown systems can make it difficult to access reports that show relative performance of volume and margins for comparison sake. But with PriceAdvantage fuel software, heat maps and analysis views quickly allow you to slice and dice volume and margin information to see how a market of your stores is doing relative to another market, and which stores are shining stars vs. which stores are burdens bringing down overall performance.
With this information, your PriceAdvantage fuel management software allows you to adjust marketing and fuel pricing strategies to optimize performance at the store and market level, and maximize prices across the enterprise fuel system.
by John Keller | May 31, 2013 | Fuel Price Management Solutions, Industry News, Retail Fuel Margins
According to the latest OPIS report, retail fuel margins saw their biggest increase in 12 weeks, with a $0.094 per gallon rise. Average retail fuel margins across the USA now stand at $0.218 per gallon, the highest margins all May.
Average year to date fuel margins were up slightly to $0.169 per gallon. Quarter to date fuel margins reversed their six week trend and increased to $0.183 per gallon. The six week average for fuel margins now stands at $0.161 per gallon.
A large part of this gain in fuel margins can be attributed to the mid-west refineries coming back online so that costs can come down, allowing fuel retailers to temporarily hold steady with retail fuel pricing and recoup their lower margins seen over the past month.
But traditionally these higher margins prove to be only temporary, as fuel retailers begin to drop their prices to gain a competitive edge and gain volumes. As always, retail fuel software is critical to win this cat and mouse game, balancing volumes and margins while remaining competitive and maximizing profits.
