by John Keller | May 28, 2020 | Fuel Price Management, Fuel Price Management Solutions, Fuel Price Optimization, Fuel Pricing Software, Fuel Pricing Strategy, Fuel Pricing Technology, Fuel Software, Industry News, PriceAdvantage
PriceAdvantage Releases New Integration with GasBuddy Business Pages, Giving Fuel Retailers More Control When Promoting Fuel Prices
Integration ensures more accurate fuel prices on GasBuddy, the app used by millions of drivers daily to decide where to fill up; update happens as often as every 15 minutes
Colorado Springs, Colo., May 28, 2020 — PriceAdvantage, a patented software solution that helps retailers optimize and manage fuel prices, then automatically execute and verify price changes to the POS, pumps, and price signs, announced today a new integration with GasBuddy Business Pages, the leading SaaS B2B platform for the retail fuel and convenience store industry. The integration provides PriceAdvantage and GasBuddy Business Pages customers more frequency and accuracy when communicating new prices to GasBuddy, the travel and navigation app that is used by more North American drivers to save money on gas.
This new integration ensures that consumers view the most recent and accurate fuel prices on GasBuddy by communicating a retailer’s current fuel prices as often as every fifteen minutes. It puts public-facing prices in the control of the retailer, rather than have them solely rely on crowd-sourced prices.
“This integration gives fuel retailers greater control over when and which commodities they update on the GasBuddy app,” shared John Keller, Division Director of PriceAdvantage. “It provides retailers 100% accuracy between what consumers see at the pump and what they view on the internet.”
GasBuddy Business Pages is an award-winning business solution suite for fuel brands and convenience store owners to manage all location listings across the digital landscape, promote store sites and amenities, and connect with customers.
“GasBuddy has the largest addressable audience of fuel and convenience store shoppers before they embark on their trip, so it’s essential that your fuel prices are accurate,” said Jordan Grossman, EVP of advertising sales at GasBuddy. “Our fuel and c-store partners will now have the power to confidently implement price changes to our platform, ensuring their prices are getting in front of drivers quickly.”
The integration is an enhancement feature of PriceAdvantage Version 2020.1, as PriceAdvantage and GasBuddy are decade-long partners in the fuel marketing world.
To request a free trial of PriceAdvantage software, visit www.priceadvantage.com/test-drive/. Learn more about GasBuddy business pages at https://www.gasbuddy.com/businesspages.
About PriceAdvantage
PriceAdvantage creates Software to Fuel Your Pricing StrategyTM. Our easy-to-use, highly configurable solution allows fuel marketers to execute their unique fuel pricing strategy faster and more accurately by reducing manual processes and human errors. PriceAdvantage enables customers to make rapid, informed fuel pricing decisions based on their unique business rules, then automatically post new prices to their POS systems, fuel pumps and price signs, and then receive price change confirmation – all in just minutes. PriceAdvantage is singularly focused on fuel pricing software and is a division of a privately held U.S. company, Skyline Products, which produces software solutions and thousands of American-made gas price and transportation signs annually. Learn more at www.PriceAdvantage.com.
About GasBuddy
For budget-minded drivers, GasBuddy is the travel and navigation app that is used by more North American drivers to save money on gas than any other. Unlike fuel retailer apps, as well as newer apps focused on fuel savings, GasBuddy covers 150,000+ gas stations in North America, giving drivers 27 ways to save on fuel. That’s why GasBuddy has been downloaded nearly 90 million times – more than any other travel and navigation app focused on gas savings. To learn more about GasBuddy, visit www.GasBuddy.com.
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 | Feb 23, 2016 | Fuel Price Management, Fuel Price Management Solutions, Fuel Price Optimization, Fuel Pricing Software, Fuel Pricing Strategy, Fuel Pricing Technology, Fuel Software, Industry News, PriceAdvantage, Retail Fuel Margins
Here we are heading into the end of February and everyone in the retail fuels business knows the season of rising gas prices is just around the corner. It happens every year: refinery prices increase, wholesale costs go up, and eventually the retail fuel marketer must respond.
We’re already seeing signs of this season being upon us. According to the Lundberg Survey, the average unbranded rack price for Regular Unleaded across the US has risen over seven cents since February 10. In the Midwest, the regional unbranded rack price average has shot up almost $0.23 per gallon in ten days. Yet refiner margins are still low, and pressure to increase margins continues to build .
Demand is higher year to date than 2015. That makes sense because in 2015, total US miles traveled broke a new record at 3.1 trillion miles. That record has stood since 2007, before the recession started. This number reflects miles traveled by passenger vehicle, bus, and truck. All indications are that 2016 will continue with similar numbers.
What does this mean to the Retail Fuel Manager? I recently spoke with one of our customers who manage a large number of locations across a number of dramatically different markets. He said that as he sees big increases in wholesale cost like what has happened recently in the Midwest, he’s faced with playing a game of chicken. Retailers are looking at each other to see who is going to move first. In order to be most effective in this retail fuel pricing game, you must go beyond simply responding to replacement cost and competitor price changes. You must have access to retail fuel pricing software that quickly shows you historical fuels volume performance for a store and market, compared to budget targets. You must be able to quickly see actual fuels margins store by store and across a region. You must be able to track past history of your prices vs. competitor prices, to get a sense of typically who moves first. And of course, the best retail fuel pricing strategy is a well executed fuel pricing strategy: once you determine the proper price for each grade at each location, you must be able to execute those prices out to the street across all locations.
One could say that recently it was relatively easy to make money in retail fuels because of falling wholesales prices and healthy margins. But as we head into the spring, this is when times get tougher and it takes more insight and faster response times to maximize retail fuel and overall store profits.
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 | 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.
by John Keller | May 26, 2015 | Customer News, Fuel Price Management, Fuel Price Management Solutions, Fuel Price Optimization, Fuel Pricing Software, Fuel Pricing Strategy, Fuel Pricing Technology, Fuel Software, Industry News, PriceAdvantage, Retail Fuel Margins
Kocolene, an operator of 22 Fast Max stores throughout Indiana and Kentucky, experienced a 3% increase in 2014 fuel volume sales after just one year of using PriceAdvantage fuel pricing software – exceeding the national average increase by 2%. At the same time, the fuel retailer was able maximize fuel margins to create a substantial increase with overall gross fuel profits. The 2014 performance improvements are featured in a recent case study alongside other organizational benefits derived from using PriceAdvantage mobile fuel pricing technology. The case study may be found here.
In early 2013, Fast Max executives realized their manual, tedious processes for obtaining market data and setting fuel price changes needed updating. By adopting PriceAdvantage mobile fuel pricing technology, Fast Max was able to replace manual phone and paper processes for collecting competitive fuel prices, gained immediate access to accurate competitive information and market data, and automated price changes from headquarters to the store POS system and fuel price signs.
Within the first year of using PriceAdvantage, Fast Max increased its fuel sales and productivity. PriceAdvantage allowed Fast Max to quickly and easily catch developing trends in the market, signaling when an adjustment in their pricing strategy was needed to capture fuel sales. “Using PriceAdvantage, we have seen a 3% gain in fuel volumes over the previous year while maximizing margins and experiencing significant growth in gross profits. On top of that, we have a relationship with PriceAdvantage that feels more like a partnership.” Lance Gentry, Vice President of Operations.
By using PriceAdvantage mobile fuel pricing software, Fast Max corporate management reviews data, receives alerts and makes price changes on their smart phones, as well as perform many functions without having to call each store and interrupt a team member or manager who may be assisting customers. PriceAdvantage streamlined the entire pricing process and provided store managers and team members more time to service and sell to customers, as well as perform other tasks.
Fast Max chose the PriceAdvantage subscription pricing model that provided rapid software implementation with minimal upfront costs or hardware investments. This flexible model allowed Fast Max to license specific software components, enabling them to create an affordable solution to meet their specific needs. With the demonstrated increase in sales, PriceAdvantage easily delivered a measureable ROI.
