by John Keller | Sep 25, 2012 | Fuel Pricing Software, PriceAdvantage
As we build each screen for our PriceAdvantage fuel pricing software, we view it through the eyes of the people who will be interacting with that screen, and focus on what they are trying to accomplish using the information presented to them. As we do this, we apply a concise set of words to describe each user interface we build.
In the broadest categories, PriceAdvantage is made up of the Headquarters interface and the Store interface.
The primary user of the Headquarters interface is the fuel pricing manager. The set of words we use for the overall set of Headquarters screens are these:
- centralized information
- rich analysis
- fast pricing
The primary user of the Store software is the store manager. The set of words we use for the overall set of Store screens are these:
- drop-dead simple
- generate trust
The recurring feedback we receive from our customers and prospects is that PriceAdvantage is very easy to understand and easy to use. As we build new versions of PriceAdvantage, we will continue to build more robust capabilities, but we will apply these best practices to make sure we never allow the user interface to grow confusingly complex.
by John Keller | Aug 21, 2012 | Fuel Pricing Software, Fuel Pricing Strategy
Today BP issued a public recall of 2.1 million gallons of gasoline produced by the BP Whiting refinery near the Indiana – Illinois border. Hundreds of reports of car trouble have flooded Northwest Indiana repair shops caused by contaminated gasoline that had higher than normal levels of polymeric residue.
BP is advising that anyone who has encountered car trouble because of their bad gasoline should hold onto their receipts, as BP needs a record of a credit or debit card purchase to provide a refund. Customers are also advised to document any repairs made to their cars because of the bad fuel. Any customer who paid cash needs to get a mechanic to get a fuel sample from his or her car, so BP can verify where it came from. BP has assigned 90 phone operators to staff a customer hotline fielding complaints by customers of the bad fuel.
From a fuel price management perspective, fuel managers offering brands other than BP in this market need to make the most of this opportunity with their gasoline pricing strategy to optimize their retail fuel margins. Fuel managers offering the BP fuel brand in this market need to monitor their volumes and mitigate their losses. This story has been carried by CBS News and the Chicago Tribune among other major media outlets, so the word is spreading quickly to the mid-west markets and potentially across the entire US. As a result, consumers will be leery of the BP fuel brand, and will be looking elsewhere to fill up. Competitors to BP may decide to leave their gasoline prices competitive to steal market share from the BP fuel brand. Or BP competitors may make the decision to maintain a slightly higher gasoline price for their brand with the expectation that former BP customers are willing to pay more for trusted gasoline.
In any event, it is critical for fuel price optimization software to allow the fuel manager to record the circumstances around this week for historical reference, so next quarter, and next year, the fuel management team can point to specific reasons why this week, and the weeks thereafter, are different than other weeks on the calendar.
by John Keller | Jun 18, 2012 | Fuel Price Management, Fuel Pricing Software, Fuel Pricing Technology
We’ve heard a lot about cloud computing lately. There’s even a Microsoft commercial on tv where at the end of the ad, the woman of the couple says “yay cloud”.
With the launch of PriceAdvantage Express, there is now a robust fuel price management solution in the cloud. The point of this new product is that c-stores can now rapidly have access to fuel pricing software without any software to install or servers to support. While PriceAdvantage Express does not integrate to POS systems, it does provide a quick way to improve the process of collecting store surveys, review the relationship of my price vs. competitor price in graphs and charts without sifting through a series of spreadsheets, and quickly send the optimized fuel price to each location.
PriceAdvantage customers have spoken highly of the fact that this new offering provides a simple, easy, and rapid way to get a fuel price management solution up and running. And since it can be accessed from mobile devices such as the iPad, iPhone, or Droid, it is available from anywhere, freeing up the fuel manager to get the business of changing fuel prices done quickly so he can get back to other strategic, or more fun activities.
by John Keller | Feb 10, 2012 | Fuel Pricing Software, Industry News, PriceAdvantage
Longtime PriceAdvantage customer Fikes Wholesale, operating the c-store chain CEFCO Convenience Stores, had the highest percentage growth of store count across the entire convenience store industry from December 2010 to December 2011.
According to Convenience Store News, the company’s store count grew by 57.6% in 2011. Fikes added 72 stores during that time period, 71 of which were acquisitions. In January 2012, Fikes added another 63 stores, bringing the total to 257 stores across seven states.
Skyline Products is proud to have Fikes Wholesale fully deployed with PriceAdvantage for all CEFCO stores, bringing each group of new stores onto the PriceAdvantage solution within weeks of each acquisition. Key to the Fikes strategy is to immediately use PriceAdvantage Web for the newly acquired stores so they can quickly calculate new fuel prices and view daily fuel volumes and fuel margins at each store. Importing legacy store data from the old systems allows Fikes to see the history of each store. Then over the course of several weeks Fikes implements PriceAdvantage Enterprise to allow full control of fuel price changes to the signs, POS and pumps. Since both PriceAdvantage Web and PriceAdvantage Enterprise use the same database, there is 100% data continuity through the transition.
You can read the full Convenience Store News article < a href="http://www.csnews.com/top-story-fikes_wholesale_among_industry_s_top_growers-60461.html">here.
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 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.
