by John Keller | Oct 21, 2011 | Fuel Pricing Strategy, Fuel Pricing Technology, Industry News, PriceAdvantage
Today Convenience Store News announced that Exxon just completed the sale of nearly 300 c-stores. Back in 2008, Exxon told USA Today they wanted to sell its c-stores because “it’s so hard to make money selling gas and diesel fuel to customers.”
Yes, Exxon, the days are over when you could simply open a store, fly your flag, and make money selling fuel. The retail fuel market is more dynamic and more competitive than ever. Fuel costs change daily, competitors are increasingly aggressive, and consumers are careful to pick where they buy fuel. It’s certainly not a business for the faint of heart.
And that’s precisely where fuel price management solutions like PriceAdvantage come in. Fuel Analysts use PriceAdvantage to quickly see what has changed in the market over night, and in a matter of minutes, their stores are implementing price changes to react. PriceAdvantage allows them to get the right price to the right store at the right time, not eight hours after the morning commute, but in time to maximize their fuel profits that same business day. Fuel Analysts use PriceAdvantage to carefully review their store / region / market performance by fuel margin and fuel volume, compared to target, and compared to last week, last month, and last year. Fuel Analysts make adjustments to fuel pricing strategies and tweak and tune to make necessary adjustments based on market changes, and to optimize prices across the enterprise. When competitor fuel prices change throughout the day, Fuel Analysts can choose to quickly respond with fuel price changes of their own no matter where they are, using their laptop or smart phone.
C-stores simply can’t compete by managing fuels prices with the old methods of spreadsheets, phone calls, and emails. It takes the closed loop fuels price management solution of PriceAdvantage to be profitable and to stay in the fuels price game.
by John Keller | Sep 28, 2011 | Fuel Pricing Technology, Industry News
According to the US Energy Information Administration, demand for finished motor gasoline including “fuel ethanol blended into motor gasoline” is down for the first six months of 2011. The first six months of 2011, which is the most recent data captured by the US EIA, shows the per month average for motor fuels consumption down 2%, compared to the first six months of 2010. The monthly consumption average for the first six months of 2011 is 2% lower than 2009 as well.
Fuel Managers are wise to budget their fuel volume plans based on this ongoing decline in demand averages, acknowledging that the overall market in their area could very well be shrinking.
by John Keller | Sep 23, 2011 | Fuel Pricing Technology, PriceAdvantage
Skyline has successfully load tested PriceAdvantage with the VeriFone Sapphire system by sending 25,000 fuel price changes, without error. “Skyline labs routinely stress tests every PriceAdvantage version including POS integrations, in order to satisfy the demands of our customers” said John Keller, Sr. Product Manager in the PriceAdvantage division. “We’re proud of what our team and our product is able to handle when it comes to scaling to the demands of the large enterprise” Keller continued.
by John Keller | Sep 7, 2011 | Customer News, Fuel Pricing Technology, PriceAdvantage
High’s of Baltimore goes all out with PriceAdvantage at all 53 of their Shell and Citgo branded locations. Now High’s is changing prices with no human interaction at the store for every store in their chain. The Fuel Pricing team uses PriceAdvantage to review current competitor, volume, and margin information to determine the optimized price each day. Then from corporate headquarters, the Fuel Pricing team initiates the price change from PriceAdvantage, and with no human interaction, prices are changed at the VeriFone POS and pump. This process formerly took upwards of 5 hours each day, and now with PriceAdvantage, the roundtrip fuel price management process takes place every day in less than 1 hour.
by John Keller | Aug 12, 2011 | Customer News, Fuel Pricing Technology, PriceAdvantage
“Now that we have PriceAdvantage rolled out to all our 70 stores, I can change gas prices any time of day or night!” That was the feedback we just got back from one of our PriceAdvantage c-store customers in the Southeastern US.
Prior to using PriceAdvantage as their fuel price management solution, this well recognized c-store chain could only effectively change gas prices once a day. They would start the gas price change process by sending an email out to all stores. Only the store manager had the managerial code required to change gas prices, so that meant if there was no manager onsite, there could be no gas price change.
Now with PriceAdvantage, the Fuel Price Management team can change gas prices whether the store manager is there or not. The Fuel Price Manager sets the new gas price in the PriceAdvantage software, and automatically the price change appears at the store. Any cashier can click the accept gas price change button on the POS, the price change completes at the store, and the PriceAdvantage headquarters software is automatically updated with the completed price change confirmation time stamp, letting the Fuel Price Manager know that the gas price change is complete.
Now that there is no reliance on the store manager, they are changing gas prices at all hours of the day, sometimes multiple times a day. And that’s what they say makes PriceAdvantage so valuable.
by John Keller | May 17, 2011 | Customer News, Fuel Price Management, Fuel Pricing Technology
A computer glitch was to blame for a Valero convenience store selling premium fuel at $1.10 a gallon over a four hour period on May 15. The owner reported that was over $3 a gallon less than the proper price, and cost him $21,000. Roughly 7000 gallons of premium fuel were sold at that price, and police had to be called in to control the long line of traffic.
According to the Los Angeles c-store owner, the fuel price change didn’t work properly, causing the POS system to set the price to the default of $1.10 per gallon. The attendant on duty at the time was too busy staffing the convenience store and Point Of Sale system to notice the problem.
From a Fuel Price Management lesson-learned perspective, this story highlights the risk of fuel price changes going awry. Without the proper Fuel Pricing Software solution, including the critical Fuel Price Management phases of Change and Confirm, every c-store is at risk of losses like this.
The source of this article may be found here.
