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 | Mar 27, 2012 | Fuel Price Management Solutions, Fuel Pricing Technology, Industry News
According to the most recent MasterCard SpendingPulse study, fuel consumption declined 3% over the past 52 weeks. That equates to 4.2 billion gallons.
According to John Gamel, who oversees MasterCard SpendingPulse’s weekly consumption report, part of the reason for the decline is that people have purchased vehicles with better gas mileage. Average gas mileage is now 24 miles per gallon, compared to 20 mpg in 2008.
Experts agree this trend of declining fuel consumption is bound to continue. From a fuel price management perspective, it’s clear that as convenience stores continue to fight for an ever shrinking fuel market, competition will continue to be tough. Only the c-store chains with the most effective fuel pricing technology will survive.
This information was reported by Convenience Store News in an article here.
by John Keller | Mar 23, 2012 | Fuel Pricing Technology, Industry News, PriceAdvantage
The March 2012 issue of NPN magazine and www.NPNweb.com has a great article about the strategic importance of the integration between electronic price signs and fuel price management systems. Stewart Spinks, CEO of The Spinx Company, and long time PriceAdvantage and Skyline sign customer, is featured in the article.
“We can move very quickly as costs change,” Spinks says. “Some suppliers do multi-day changes. Central cost monitoring and speed of price changes can ‘signal the street’ of our desire to pass on increases or decreases to the market. If competitors don’t react within two hours, Spinx can react expediently. Furthermore, the staff does not have to stop serving customers to physically go ‘post the prices.’”
With PriceAdvantage and Skyline electronic price signs, Spinx has a comprehensive closed loop fuel price management solution, allowing fuel price optimization from cost and competitor price monitoring at the store and at HQ, to rapid deployment of those prices, optimized for each market.
The full NPN online article may be found here.
by John Keller | Feb 2, 2012 | Fuel Pricing Technology, Industry News
Chevrolet sold only 7,700 Volts for the entire 2011 year. That’s far below the target of 10,000. The trend continued into 2012, where in January Chevrolet sold only 603 Volts. The GM North America President blamed bad publicity from the government’s investigation into the fire risks.
By comparison, Nissan sold nearly 9,700 Leafs in 2011, and Nissan hopes to double that number in 2012.
From a fuel price management perspective, it’s clear that electric vehicles, while only slowly making traction in sales volumes, are steadily increasing. Clearly fuel price management strategies need to include electric vehicles longterm.
For more details, go to the Detroit News article here.
by John Keller | Nov 29, 2011 | Customer News, Fuel Price Management Solutions, Fuel Pricing Technology
PriceAdvantage, a division of Skyline Products, announced today that The Spinx Company has been using PriceAdvantage at its 65 Spinx stores across the Carolinas. PriceAdvantage, a fuel price management solution, has given Spinx the ability to make better fuel pricing decisions given the real-time intelligence provided for each store, such as competitor survey data, volume histories and retail margins.
Spinx stores also utilize PriceAdvantage to feed price changes to the Radiant POS systems, pump and Skyline electronic price signs with the one click technology that is unique to PriceAdvantage.
“We couldn’t be happier that PriceAdvantage has replaced our previous fuel pricing solution”, says Stewart Spinks, founder and CEO of The Spinx Company. “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.”
Spinks adds, “We have found that our store managers are spending about 45% less time entering data into the system since we began using PriceAdvantage, giving them more time to focus on customers.”
Aaron McHugh, Head of PriceAdvantage division, adds “It’s invigorating to hear from an Industry Hall of Famer like Stewart Spinks that PriceAdvantage is providing The Spinx Company with a more efficient and effective fuel pricing tool.”
Stewart Spinks was recently inducted into the Convenience Store News Industry Hall of Fame for being a convenience store pioneer and innovator.
PriceAdvantage is a highly specialized retail fuel pricing solution for the Convenience Store industry, designed to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of a retailer’s pricing process. 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. The ability to change prices immediately at the POS, fuel pumps and electronic price signs from the centralized headquarters location with one click makes the solution unique in the industry.
About The Spinx Company
With The Spinx Co.’s leading edge technology and exceptional customer service, the company is “Making Life Easier” for customers. Headquartered in Greenville, S.C., Spinx operates 65 convenience retail stores in South Carolina and North Carolina. Founded in 1972 by Stewart Spinks, today the company is the largest privately held gasoline-convenience retailer in South Carolina and is ranked among the top U.S. convenience store chains in the country. For more information, visit www.spinx.com.
About Skyline Products
Skyline Products is the leading developer, manufacturer and provider of fuel pricing and central control software, electronic price displays and dynamic message signs to the fuels, transportation, and government vertical segments in North America. The PriceAdvantage division allows fuel retailers to collect competitive data, determine optimized fuel pricing and automate price changes at the POS, fuel pump and electronic price signs, creating a streamlined closed loop fuel pricing process. Company headquarters are located in Colorado Springs, CO. For more information about Skyline Products please visit www.skylineproducts.com or www.sellmoregas.com.
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.
