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 | Jul 20, 2015 | Customer News, Fuel Price Management Solutions, Fuel Pricing Technology, Fuel Software, PriceAdvantage
The PriceAdvantage team would like to welcome our newest customer and partner, Star Fuels, to the PriceAdvantage family.
Star Fuels operates 65 convenience stores throughout Texas, and they elected the PriceAdvantage SaaS offering in the cloud for the low upfront cost, ease of implementation, and the maintenance and infrastructure cost benefits. The Star Fuels implementation includes the Gilbarco and VeriFone POS systems.
Bob Kastetter, COO of Star Fuels, says PriceAdvantage will allow them to be much more responsive to market changes, and free up staff time to manage other business critical duties.
Welcome Star Fuels – we look forward to our ongoing partnership!
by John Keller | Jul 10, 2015 | Customer News, Fuel Price Management, Fuel Pricing Technology, Fuel Software, Industry News
Longtime PriceAdvantage and Skyline sign customer Parker’s announced the release of their new mobile app built by Zingon LLC. Among other things, the mobile app displays fuel prices at each of their locations. The Parker’s implementation of this mobile app includes an automated fuel price feed from PriceAdvantage to make sure gas prices are always accurate. Convenience Store Decisions reported the story here.
“Our customers told us they wanted an easy-to-use app that would enable them to access gas prices and Parker’s information at their convenience,” said Greg Parker, Parker’s president and CEO. “This new app represents our fast, fresh and friendly culture. It makes it easier than ever for Parker’s customers to see the best deals on gas prices and our specials on other products.”
Zingon mobile apps are available on both Android and iOS. The apps are designed to be easy to use and to eliminate carrying all the individual elements for store chains: Credit Card, Loyalty Card, Clipped Coupons and a phone to look up store locations and gas prices. Read more about Zingon here.
by John Keller | Jun 18, 2015 | Customer News, Fuel Price Management Solutions, Fuel Pricing Technology, Industry News
Family Express is the latest PriceAdvantage customer to win the distinguished Convenience Store Decisions Convenience Store Chain of the Year award. The award recognizes innovation, outstanding operations, superior leadership and an ongoing commitment to convenience retailing.
“Words can’t express how honored we are for Family Express being recognized,” said Gus Olympidis, founder, president and CEO of Family Express. “Our focus has always been on customers, employees, and community, and not on ourselves. We will cherish this moment in gratitude for our supplier partners and the relationships of a lifetime that this great industry has afforded us.”
Family Express has been a PriceAdvantage customer since 2013. Tom Navarre, Vice President of Petroleum Marketing and Logistics of the 63 store chain, and member of the PriceAdvantage Customer Advisory Board, says that PriceAdvantage helps Family Express be more efficient in their daily operations by automating their process for implementing new fuel prices. The efficiency gains allow the chain to remain competitive on an hourly basis, and give store associates more time to devote to outstanding, friendly customer service.
Previous PriceAdvantage customers who have won this prestigious award include Sheetz, Mapco, Valero (now CST Brands), and Rutter’s.
by John Keller | Jun 15, 2015 | Customer News, Fuel Price Management, Fuel Price Optimization, Fuel Pricing Software, Fuel Pricing Technology, Fuel Software
CrossAmerica Partners announced today the acquisition of One Stop, a chain of 41 company owned c-stores based in West Virginia. Read more about the announcement published in Convenience Store News here.
In December 2014, the partnership of CrossAmerica Partners and CST Brands announced the acquisition of the 22 store chain Landmark Stores operating in San Antonio and Austin, as well as the 64 store chain Erickson Oil Products, Inc. operating in Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin and South Dakota. In November of last year, the partnership of CST Brands and CrossAmerica Partners closed the acquisition of Nice N Easy, a 77 store chain in central New York state.
The announcement today marks the fourth chain of c-stores acquired by CrossAmerica Partners, now a wholly owned subsidiary of CST Brands.
CST Brands selected PriceAdvantage for their fuel pricing system in 2011, back when they were under the Valero umbrella. The field Operations folks at CST Brands have found the PriceAdvantage mobile component to be one of their most helpful applications.
by John Keller | Jun 5, 2015 | Customer News, Fuel Price Management, Fuel Pricing Software, Fuel Pricing Technology, Fuel Software, PriceAdvantage
Earlier this week we had the pleasure of hosting one of our customers to our corporate headquarters. If this were a standard sales and management update it would not stand out as being anything particularly special. But this meeting was different because we took the time to introduce our customer visitors to the PriceAdvantage development team.
We have never believed it makes sense to take our software development offshore, no matter how much it may seem to be cost effective when you run the numbers. Software development agility that can quickly respond to the changing demands of the market and customer base can only be achieved when the folks building the software are co-located with the product management, sales and marketing groups.
And this week we could see the benefits in person when one of our customer fuel managers who uses PriceAdvantage every day shook the hand of each of our developers, looked each one in the eye, and said thank you. Our development team could hear directly from one of our customers that what they build matters and is appreciated. That meeting will make a lasting impact because when our development team builds new features, they will be able to think back and see in their mind’s eye the person for whom they’re writing code. And when our customer upgrades to the latest PriceAdvantage version, they’ll be able to remember that our development team is not far away, taking to heart their ongoing product needs.
My mantra has always been that customer collaboration creates lifelong customers by creating partnerships. This week we saw this partner relationship in person.