by Grant Garrison | Aug 26, 2013 | Fuel Price Management, Fuel Pricing Software, PriceAdvantage
Everybody’s out there looking for pennies: Fuel customers are using mobile apps and will make challenging left turns for the promise of saving just a few pennies on a fill-up. Amid this, fuel retailers look for ways to wring a few pennies of profit from the sale. It’s a game won or lost on small increments, and folks on both sides of the counter know that those pennies add up.
In the past few years, discovering the “sweet spot” that brings customers off the street and grows fuel sale volume and profit has become easier. OPIS- and PDI-integrated tools let everybody from single-store operators to chains with hundreds of locations quickly access real-time competitive data. With a click, they can know which stores or regions are underperforming. They can easily see where they’re making the most or least money and where their pricing is getting beat by competitors down the street or miles away.
Real-time insight into volume, margin, and gallon performance gives leaders the ammunition they need to formulate an agile pricing strategy—on a laptop, tablet, or smartphone. But that’s only half the battle. That price now has to go to every POS, pump, and sign in every store. And the longer it takes the more money you lose.
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by John Keller | Jun 27, 2013 | Customer News, Fuel Pricing Software, Fuel Software, Industry News, PriceAdvantage
More and more we’re seeing PriceAdvantage customers adapt GasBuddy OpenStore as their digital marketing solution. First it was Rutter’s, then it was Parker’s, followed by Family Express. CST Brands, formerly Valero, is the fourth PriceAdvantage customer to use both PriceAdvantage as their fuel software system for managing retail fuel prices, and GasBuddy OpenStore for digital marketing.
The synergy between the two solutions is powerful. When the fuel analyst pushes the optimized prices to the street, and the fuel price changes are completed at the POS, pumps and electronic price signs, the confirmation message is returned back to PriceAdvantage with a time and date stamp audit trail showing the exact time of completion.
Once the price changes are complete, PriceAdvantage through its integration automatically publishes the newest gas prices to GasBuddy OpenStore. From there the prices can be distributed to the various GasBuddy sites, making sure the latest and most accurate prices are on the GasBuddy map. This process also helps make sure every store appears on the GasBuddy map and doesn’t drop off due to a lack of price report updates.
PriceAdvantage offers a similar integration with OPIS, where upon completion and confirmation of the fuel price changes, PriceAdvantage publishes the latest price information to OPIS, from which the prices are distributed to the entire OPIS network including MapQuest, Garmin, and AAA.
Gas price signs have already moved from the old fashioned manual suction cup, to the electronic gas price sign, and are now adding the digital virtual sign seen on the Web. With PriceAdvantage and the integrations to GasBuddy OpenStore and OPIS, the price signs are current across every type, maximizing all marketing and branding efforts.
by John Keller | Feb 9, 2013 | Customer News, Fuel Price Management, PriceAdvantage, Retail Fuel Margins
Valero announced in their 2012 end of year financial results that margins were up and volumes were steady.
Margins for the quarter were at $0.208 per gallon up from $0.139 in 2011. For the entire year, margins were up from $0.144 in 2011 to $0.162 in 2012.
Volumes per day per site for the quarter and for the year were relatively steady, down only 1.6% for the quarter, and up .004% for the year. According to the US Energy Information Administration, 2012 fuels demand was down .3%. That means Valero gained market share in 2012.
According to the report, Valero’s retail segment reported $95 million of operating income in the fourth quarter of 2012 versus $83 million of operating income in the fourth quarter of 2011. The increase in operating income was mainly due to higher fuel margins in the U.S., which was somewhat offset by lower fuel margins and a non-cash asset impairment loss of $9 million before taxes in Canada. For the full-year 2012, the retail segment generated $348 million of operating income, and those results were second only to the 2011 record-high results of $381 million.
We at the PriceAdvantage team would like to congratulate the Valero retail fuels group on their success in 2012. The fourth quarter of 2012 was the first full quarter when PriceAdvantage was in production at all the 1000+ Valero company stores.
by John Keller | Dec 27, 2012 | Industry News, PriceAdvantage
Congratulations to Parker’s on the successful opening of their 30th store, this time in Rincon Georgia. Parker’s uses PriceAdvantage as their cloud solution to manage their fuel pricing strategy and monitor company-wide fuels performance down to the store level. After opening their 28th store in October, this is now their second new store opening in two months.
The PriceAdvantage team is proud to have Parker’s as a PriceAdvantage fuel pricing software customer and to contribute to Parker’s continued success as they expand.
by John Keller | Dec 19, 2012 | Industry News, PriceAdvantage
Congratulations to PriceAdvantage customer Sheetz, who opened their third new store this month, and raised their total store count to 433. Sheetz has been using PriceAdvantage as their fuel pricing software since 2009.
“We estimate Skyline’s PriceAdvantage™ software to drive $141,000 in annual cost savings, and give store managers up to 50 extra hours annually per store to spend with our customers.” says Mark Wilson, Director of Store Support, Sheetz. “Giving store managers more time with our customers is our overriding team goal, and a competitive advantage for Sheetz. PriceAdvantage software gives us that and more in a usable, understandable, teachable and trainable package.”
by John Keller | Dec 14, 2012 | Industry News, PriceAdvantage
“We couldn’t be happier that PriceAdvantage has replaced our previous fuel pricing solution. 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.” So says Stewart Spinks, founder of The Spinx Company and member of the Convenience Store News Industry Hall of Fame. The Spinx Company uses PriceAdvantage as their fuel price optimization software to manage all their c-stores across South and North Carolina.
“We needed a solution that would allow our managers to spend more time taking care of our customers instead of entering data that was already available through our POS systems,” adds Mr. Spinks. “PriceAdvantage has saved Spinx store managers an estimated 45 per minutes per day as they no longer enter volume or sales data. Additionally, we are implementing price changes faster and more accurately than ever as PriceAdvantage changes prices from the POS to the pump and electronic price signs with one click. We are extremely happy with our decision to install PriceAdvantage across our network of stores. PriceAdvantage has reduced the amount of time it takes us to respond to competitor moves as well as other market conditions.”
The PriceAdvantage team has established a strong partnership with The Spinx Company, as is typical of the relationships we like to establish with all our customers. These partnerships inevitably lead to ever improving features in the PriceAdvantage software. With Valero, it was heat maps, robust store and market performance analytics, and fuel price optimization. With Cefco it was powerful fuel pricing strategy business rules. With The Spinx Company it was a series of reports that provide business insight in numerous ways, and most recently the ability to text a store manager when a price change has been submitted.
The PriceAdvantage team is proud to have such a strong partnership with The Spinx Company, a partnership that leads to mutually beneficial ongoing improvements in the business at both of our companies.
