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 22, 2011 | Fuel Price Management Solutions, Industry News, PriceAdvantage
Employee error led a c-store to sell Premium fuel at $2.65, which was $1 less than the correct price. The lost profits were caused by an employee entering the wrong price into the RaceWay fuel price management system. According to the News & Messenger, and insidenova.com, the Manassas Virginia Raceway station was unable to quantify exactly how much money RaceWay lost during the time of the incorrect price. But nearby competitors had the Premium fuel price at $3.68 and $3.71, more than $1 higher.
In the RaceWay fuel pricing process, corporate officials determine prices for the day and communicate those prices to the store managers. The store managers then manually enter the prices for each grade into the store computer. As an alternative to the RaceWay system, the PriceAdvantage Fuel Price Management solution provides a way to automatically set store prices based on what fuel analysts at the headquarters office determine is the optimized fuel prices for the day. By removing the store managers from the fuel pricing process, PriceAdvantage removes the chance for the kind of human error experienced by the RaceWay store.
The original news story may be found here.
by John Keller | Sep 13, 2011 | Customer News, Fuel Price Management, Fuel Price Management Solutions, PriceAdvantage
CEFCO Convenience stores has extended their PriceAdvantage fuel price management solutions to their 69 newly acquired stores, bringing their total fuel pricing software system store count to 192. CEFCO successfully completed the acquisition of an additional 69 stores on August 15, 2011, and in just under one month they had PriceAdvantage managing fuel prices at all the new stores. CEFCO originally implemented their PriceAdvantage fuel pricing software to their 123 store chain at the time in under three months back in September 2010.
The CEFCO fuel price management solutions manage fuel prices from headquarters out to the VeriFone and Gilbarco POS systems, to the pump, and to Skyline electronic signs. This accelerated implementation time table is partly due to their quick adoption of their PriceAdvantage Web solution, allowing fuel pricing decisions to be made over the browser via the BlackBerry. PriceAdvantage allows CEFCO to carefully monitor daily volumes provided by PDI, as well as daily cost and margin, and competitor movement, to implement optimized retail fuel prices in minutes.
by John Keller | Sep 9, 2011 | Industry News, PriceAdvantage
In the July / August 2011 issue of National Petroleum News, the cover story features PriceAdvantage in an article titled “Price Modeling: Changing Attitudes Towards Automated Pricing” that can be found here. This article discusses how software can be used to give fuel managers an edge in their pricing strategies and in turn, make more money. The two featured products are KSS PriceNet and Skyline Products PriceAdvantage. The two PriceAdvantage customer interviews are with CEFCO and Sheetz.
by John Keller | Sep 8, 2011 | Customer News, Fuel Price Management Solutions, Industry News, PriceAdvantage
At The Spinx Company, OPIS Radius reports are providing real-time competitive price imports that drive new fuel pricing strategy changes for 70+ stores. While Spinx Store Managers continue to submit their daily competitor surveys first thing each morning, the OPIS Radius reports provide additional competitive intelligence, allowing the Spinx Fuel Analysts to quickly respond to competitor moves throughout the day. The OPIS Radius reports provide data that Fuel Analysts can view in the PriceAdvantage dashboard, the screen in the software from which the Fuel Analysts initiate fuel price changes to the store. That dashboard is also where Fuel Analysts can see the confirmation time and date stamp of when the price change was automatically completed at the POS, sign and pump. The combination of PriceAdvantage and the OPIS Radius reports allow Spinx to get the right price to the right store at the right time faster than their previous email and corporate intranet system.
The Spinx Company formerly relied on MPSI, recently acquired by KSS, for their fuel price management solution. It was the ability to view OPIS Radius information in a PriceAdvantage consolidated view, along with volume, price history and current margin, as well as the roundtrip fuel price management automated closed loop process, that convinced the Spinx Company to implement PriceAdvantage at all their stores.
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.
