by John Keller | Sep 20, 2016 | Fuel Price Management, Fuel Pricing Software, Fuel Pricing Strategy, Industry News
The Colonial Pipeline leak last week continues to impact supplies in the Southeastern United States, especially in Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, North Carolina and South Carolina. According to AAA, Georgia fuel prices rose $.05 per gallon overnight, but consumers report increases of $.20 per gallon. Alabama Governor Robert Bentley said Monday that gas prices in parts of Alabama rose 20 cents over the weekend, but the governor says he didn’t consider that price gouging. North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper on Monday urged North Carolina consumers to report gas prices that seem unreasonably high; over 400 consumers have filed complaints.
Some chains are without fuel in specific areas. A QuikTrip spokesman reported 21 of the 37 stores in the Charlotte, North Carolina area were out of unleaded gas Monday afternoon. In metro Atlanta, more than 60 of the 131 QuikTrip stores were also out of unleaded gas Monday afternoon. QuikTrip is keeping a list on its website of stores in both markets that have gas available.
On that page, QuikTrip writes “Due to supply issues caused by a major pipeline break in the Southeast, several stores are currently out of Regular and Premium Unleaded gasoline. The stores listed below DO have gasoline. Please note we are doing our best to keep this up to date, however this is a very dynamic situation. We apologize if the list below is inaccurate.”
What does this mean from a fuel price management perspective? Four things:
- More than ever it’s critical to keep a close watch on how the competition is priced, since market pricing can change multiple times a day.
- Executing new prices to the street, sometimes multiple times a day in order to keep up with market conditions, is vital.
- Maintaining a complete fuel pricing audit trail for every location, especially comparing prices to the competition, is important if the government ever makes an accusation of price gouging.
- When comparing this time period to previous and future years, it’s important to mark these days as a time when there was a supply crunch. These extraordinary circumstances must be taken into consideration when comparing volumes and margins, since they’re likely to be anything but normal. It is these kinds of special events that can wreak havoc on economic models.
PriceAdvantage makes it easy to track market price moves, and to execute new prices to the street in a hurry. PriceAdvantage reports make quick order of providing audit trails if the government comes knocking. And in the PriceAdvantage analysis views, it’s easy to see notes that you can enter to designate these days as being out of the ordinary.
These are the days when a PriceAdvantage system pays for itself many times over.
by John Keller | Sep 13, 2016 | Fuel Price Management, Fuel Pricing Software, Fuel Pricing Technology, Fuel Software
The PriceAdvantage team is excited to announce the general availability of PriceAdvantage version 2016.2. Highlights of this new release include a new Fuel Profit Analysis view, the configurability of the browser interface, and numerous usability improvements. All of these ideas came directly from PriceAdvantage customers.
This is our third major release so far this year. The PriceAdvantage development team uses Agile software best practices to rapidly build and deliver iterative releases throughout the year, always staying in close contact with the latest needs of our customers.
Please contact your Account Representative, or anyone on our Support team, to learn more about this new release, to schedule a demonstration, and to arrange for an upgrade.
by John Keller | Jun 3, 2016 | Fuel Price Management, Fuel Pricing Software, Fuel Pricing Technology
The PriceAdvantage team is excited to announce the general availability of PriceAdvantage version 2016.1. Highlights of this new release include the ability to set a future price change from additional areas of the product, Market View in the browser, and numerous usability improvements. All of these ideas came directly from PriceAdvantage customers.
This is our second major release so far this year. The PriceAdvantage development team uses Agile software best practices to rapidly build and deliver iterative releases throughout the year, always staying in close contact with the latest needs of our customers.
Please contact your Account Representative, or anyone on our Support team, to learn more about this new release, to schedule a demonstration, and to arrange for an upgrade.
by John Keller | May 7, 2016 | Customer News, Fuel Price Management, Fuel Price Optimization, Fuel Pricing Software, Fuel Pricing Strategy, Fuel Pricing Technology, Fuel Software
In the May 6, 2016 financial report, PriceAdvantage customer CST Brands reported that Gross Profit on fuel sales improved to $75 million from $63 million in the same quarter 2015.
Kim Lubel, Chairman and CEO of CST Brands said: “We showed continued strength in fuel gross profits in the U.S., as a result of a favorable fuel margin environment and our continued fuel pricing optimization initiatives.”
We at PriceAdvantage are proud to be a key part of how CST Brands executes on those fuel pricing optimization initiatives. CST Brands has been using PriceAdvantage for pricing all U.S. stores since 2012.
by John Keller | Feb 29, 2016 | Customer News, Fuel Price Management, Fuel Pricing Software, Fuel Pricing Strategy, Fuel Pricing Technology, Fuel Software, PriceAdvantage
The PriceAdvantage team would like to welcome BellStores as our newest customer and partner. BellStores operates 55 convenience stores throughout Ohio.
BellStores selected PriceAdvantage so that BellStores fuel analysts can directly drive fuel price changes based on intimate knowledge of the market and BellStores corporate strategies. By establishing pre-defined store-specific strategies, BellStores can streamline and automate price changes to their VeriFone POS systems, pumps, and electronic gas price signs – allowing the fuel retailer to execute faster, more informed price changes.
Like most PriceAdvantage customers, BellStores selected the SaaS offering in the cloud for the low upfront cost, ease of implementation, and the maintenance and infrastructure cost benefits.
Doug Combs, Vice President at BellStores said “To remain competitive, we needed to replace the time-consuming manual processes of collecting competitive data and communicating new prices. PriceAdvantage will help us streamline and automate competitive surveys and posting new prices. And the fact that I can do this from my phone or tablet is really exciting.”
Welcome BellStores – we look forward to our ongoing partnership!
by John Keller | Feb 23, 2016 | Fuel Price Management, Fuel Price Management Solutions, Fuel Price Optimization, Fuel Pricing Software, Fuel Pricing Strategy, Fuel Pricing Technology, Fuel Software, Industry News, PriceAdvantage, Retail Fuel Margins
Here we are heading into the end of February and everyone in the retail fuels business knows the season of rising gas prices is just around the corner. It happens every year: refinery prices increase, wholesale costs go up, and eventually the retail fuel marketer must respond.
We’re already seeing signs of this season being upon us. According to the Lundberg Survey, the average unbranded rack price for Regular Unleaded across the US has risen over seven cents since February 10. In the Midwest, the regional unbranded rack price average has shot up almost $0.23 per gallon in ten days. Yet refiner margins are still low, and pressure to increase margins continues to build .
Demand is higher year to date than 2015. That makes sense because in 2015, total US miles traveled broke a new record at 3.1 trillion miles. That record has stood since 2007, before the recession started. This number reflects miles traveled by passenger vehicle, bus, and truck. All indications are that 2016 will continue with similar numbers.
What does this mean to the Retail Fuel Manager? I recently spoke with one of our customers who manage a large number of locations across a number of dramatically different markets. He said that as he sees big increases in wholesale cost like what has happened recently in the Midwest, he’s faced with playing a game of chicken. Retailers are looking at each other to see who is going to move first. In order to be most effective in this retail fuel pricing game, you must go beyond simply responding to replacement cost and competitor price changes. You must have access to retail fuel pricing software that quickly shows you historical fuels volume performance for a store and market, compared to budget targets. You must be able to quickly see actual fuels margins store by store and across a region. You must be able to track past history of your prices vs. competitor prices, to get a sense of typically who moves first. And of course, the best retail fuel pricing strategy is a well executed fuel pricing strategy: once you determine the proper price for each grade at each location, you must be able to execute those prices out to the street across all locations.
One could say that recently it was relatively easy to make money in retail fuels because of falling wholesales prices and healthy margins. But as we head into the spring, this is when times get tougher and it takes more insight and faster response times to maximize retail fuel and overall store profits.
