Better, Faster Fuel Pricing Improves Volume and Margins
Client: Flyers Energy Location: Nationwide Number of Stores: 150
Flyers Energy is the fuel supplier for more than 150 Chevron, Shell, Valero, and 76 branded stations and also offers commercial fueling at 230,000 retail gas stations and commercial fueling facilities nationwide with the Flyers Fleet Card.
In order to be competitive, Flyers needed greater control over their retail fuel pricing strategy. Bogged down by manual processes, spotty communications between the pricing manager and stores, and delayed price changes it was apparent that streamlining processes would improve both volumes and margins. By adopting PriceAdvantage, Flyers can now:
Easily establish business rules for each store and specific commodities.
View multiple pricing options to effectively manage their volume strategy.
Automatically send new prices to stores and POS systems (removing manual work).
Easily change prices several times per day to capitalize on market conditions.
Quickly evaluate real-time store performance against goals and historical data.
Results
Reducing Manual Processes and Delays Produces Real ROI
Prior to adopting PriceAdvantage, store managers utilized a back office system to input competitive price surveys. Once the data was received at headquarters, an electronic report was sent to the pricing manager who then, upon establishing new prices, would either call or email new price changes to each store individually. The entire process could take 30 minutes – or days – for each store and the pricing manager could not always rely on the verbal price change confirmations of store personnel.
Flyers selected PriceAdvantage as their solution partner in 2012 to help improve their speed-to-market and streamline retail fuel pricing processes. Tom Di Mercurio, Flyer’s CFO, notes that PriceAdvantage has reduced manual processes, errors, and delays and that the investment has also proven to help Flyers increase volumes and improve margins. “PriceAdvantage pays for itself just from an operational perspective,” he states.
Rapid Implementation, Easy Integration
Flyers was up and running in just weeks upon selecting PriceAdvantage. They were able to leverage existing investments in VeriFone Point of Sale and PDI\Enterprise accounting suite through PriceAdvantage’s pre-built integrations and also avoided additional hardware investments by selecting the PriceAdvantage SaaS solution. Additionally, if Flyers decides to upgrade or replace existing systems in the future the transition with PriceAdvantage is completely seamless – and PriceAdvantage upgrades take just minutes. DiMercurio emphasizes the personal approach from the PriceAdvantage team, “PriceAdvantage frequently reaches out to us for feedback and has used our recommendations when adding enhancements to the product. That’s great customer service.”
Pricing Strategies for Each Store and Commodity
PriceAdvantage provides Flyers the freedom to exercise their proprietary fuel pricing strategy across their entire retail fuel business. This includes controlling pre-defined pricing strategies for each store and fuel type. Flyers can also maintain different cash/credit as well as product spreads based on geography and brand. The system continually notifies the pricing manager of suggested price changes which is tempered against other exception-based factors. Additionally, the fuel pricing team utilizes the economic modeling component to forecast how raising or lowering prices by just one cent can impact volumes, margins, and profitability. PriceAdvantage blends the art and science of fuel pricing by presenting a single, comprehensive view of pricing data that includes current price alongside the suggested economic model, strategy, and competitor prices – allowing Flyers maximum flexibility on final pricing decisions.
Volume is Key to Profitability
Flyers is focused on protecting, and increasing, volume. PriceAdvantage provides Di Mercurio with the robust data required to make informed pricing decisions to help the company meet their goals. Flyers continually monitors all fuel tank levels with an in-house tool and also updates PriceAdvantage daily with actual sales and cost data from PDI\Enterprise. The pricing manager can then modify prices based on both real-time and historical information. “Volume is a key to profitability, and we go to great lengths to maintain and grow our volume. PriceAdvantage allows us to view multiple pricing options to effectively manage our target volume strategy,” he says.
Faster Pricing Helps Improve Gross Profits
Prior to using PriceAdvantage, the fuel pricing manager would send new prices to store managers via a phone call or email with little knowledge if the price changes were made that same day or even up to two days later. Now the fuel pricing manager can push new fuel prices directly to each branded store’s POS and pumps in just minutes – allowing Flyers to adjust prices as often as needed. The system also facilitates a fuel price sign change confirmation process – reminding store managers that the task needs to be completed and notifying the pricing manager once it has been done. Now Flyers can quickly respond to competitive price changes and overall market volatility with confidence.
Client:Kocolene / Fast Max Location:Indiana and Kentucky Number of Stores:22
Since 1938, Kocolene has made it their commitment to sell the highest quality gasoline at very competitive prices and operates 22 Fast Max Convenience Stores throughout Indiana and Kentucky.
Fast Max strives to provide the highest quality fuel at competitive prices. However, in early 2013 their executives realized processes for obtaining market data and setting fuel price changes were not streamlined and needed updating. By using PriceAdvantage, Fast Max has increased its sales and productivity. It estimates that it saves at least 30 minutes per day in the price change process for its stores by:
Replacing manual phone and paper processes for collecting competitive fuel prices,
Providing immediate access to accurate competitive information and market data,
Automating price changes from headquarters to the store POS system and fuel price signs.
“Using PriceAdvantage, we have seen a 3% gain in sales over the previous year, without sacrificing margins. On top of that, we have a relationship with PriceAdvantage that feels more like a partnership.”
Lance Gentry
Vice President Operations
Results
Set the Best Price in Less Time
The company’s prior processes required the corporate fuel-pricing manager to obtain survey information from each store manager, sometimes necessitating several calls, and manually make pricing decisions. This often also required them to walk team members through manually updating pricing on the POS system if changes were required.
By using PriceAdvantge, 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 streamlines the entire pricing processes and provides store managers and team members more time to service and sell to customers, as well as perform other tasks.
Easy-to-Use
Fast Max has found that pushing prices to the street with the software can be done easily and accurately with little to no training for store personnel. Managers and team members alike can quickly and easily submit competitor fuel prices and change prices on their own POS system and signage as directed by management.
“That is big for us,” says Gentry, “because we throw so much at team members at our retail locations and we really want them focused on being the face of the company to our customers. So we needed to make changing fuel prices easy and less cumbersome. PriceAdvantage allows us to achieve this goal with their streamlined and efficient platform.”
Fully Integrated
PriceAdvantage pre-built integrations consolidate disparate data from POS and back office systems into a single, easy-to-use interface. Fast Max leverages the integration with PDI Enterprise to import real-time volumes, margins, and replacement cost information. The OPIS Radius integration imports competitor price information four times per day, supplementing manager surveys and enabling Fast Max to react more quickly to competitor retail changes.
Gentry says he easily reviews this data in PriceAdvantage daily to keep a close watch on how stores are performing. “I know our daily fuel sales at each location and can easily tap into trends and adjust our retail pricing strategy accordingly.” Gentry can review store merchandise sales correlation with fuel sales and weigh the balance (in pricing) between margins and volume. PriceAdvantage integration with VeriFone Sapphire allows Fast Max to automate price updates on both gas price signs and the pumps.
Store-Level Price Control
Fast Max uses the PriceAdvantage business-rules functionality to create store-level pricing strategies and capitalize on market variables such as road closures, traffic, store features (number of pumps, food service, car wash) etc. Fast Max also uses the scheduled price change feature to automatically set price updates based on time of day, volume, etc. With this greater flexibility, Fast Max can now change fuel prices up to 3-4 times a day to capitalize on local conditions, where it used to change them on average only 3-4 times each week.
Increased Sales
Within the first year, Fast Max estimates a 3% increase in sales due to more effective fuel price strategy and management. PriceAdvantage allows Fast Max to quickly and easily catch developing trends in the market, signaling when an adjustment in their pricing strategy is needed to capture fuel sales. Gentry feels especially fortunate to achieve these results, without sacrificing margins, given that there are more fuel-efficient vehicles on the road, greater competition and other market forces.
Experiences Significant ROI – Both in Revenue and Man-Hours
CEFCO, an independently owned string of convenience stores that stretches from Alabama to Texas, was tired of leaving profits on the table. Now the 38thlargest convenience store chain in the United States, the company battled operational inefficiencies like a lengthy fuel pricing process, disparate systems, fuel pricing errors at stores, and price changes hitting the streets too late. CEFCO needed to reinvent its operations to maximize profits.
“We knew we could do better as an organization with the right vision and technology,” says Mark Lapierre, fuel coordinator manager at CEFCO. That magic “right” vision and technology came by way of PriceAdvantage, which enabled CEFCO to achieve the following:
Collect data from 185 stores in minutes.
Analyze store data and impose price changes in less than an hour – a fraction of the time it used to take.
Increase control of and accountability for price changes.
Raise profits with immediate price adjustments to the changing market.
Today CEFCO can gather information more quickly and has more control thanks to PriceAdvantage integrations with Gilbarco, VeriFone, PDI, OPIS, and electronic signs—giving the company a competitive advantage.
“We have everything in one screen and we can change prices at all 185 stores in less than an hour. Who wouldn’t want that kind of control over their fuel prices?”
– Mark Lapierre, Fuel Coordinator Manager
Results
Can Just Half a Penny per Gallon Impact Profits?
When the executive team sat down to really look at revenue numbers, they realized that an increase in profits by just half a penny per gallon would significantly impact the bottom line. However, in this highly competitive consumer market, the team knew they couldn’t simply raise prices. So CEFCO reviewed their processes, unafraid to challenge the status quo, and discovered redundant efforts, unreliable data, manual processes, technology limitations, and incomplete information from which to make long term business decisions. Simply put, CEFCO needed to modernize operations to stay competitive, and they knew that the right technology solution would significantly improve operations.
After a thorough and honest analysis of operations and extensive industry research on best practices and best-in-class tools that could support their revenue goals, CEFCO crafted a retail pricing strategy and partnered with PriceAdvantage to help CEFCO achieve its goals.
Reducing Price Changes from Five Hours to 45 Minutes
Finally, CEFCO could change prices with one click of a button and create job aids like graphs to better visualize targets, spot trends, and preempt issues. Additionally, the company could make fast, fully-informed price changes because valuable OPIS data was streamed directly into PriceAdvantage. CEFCO also automated imports of daily wholesale costs, freights and taxes, and developed an efficient system that alerted field staff through their mobile devices if any pricing issues arose, like a delay in changing prices or late surveys. “The amount of time we saved was reason enough to change our old methods,” said Lapierre. “The store managers had more sales time with customers and fewer headaches. They were ecstatic.”
Onboarding Hundreds of Stores in Just a few Months
Given the success of the program, CEFCO rolled out the software to the remaining stores in just five months, training staff on Friday and going live with the software on the following Tuesday. PriceAdvantage was so easy to understand that training was often conducted via a one-hour web conference, not in person, which saved the company substantial travel time and expenses.
Significant Revenue Gains
“My favorite result is the speed at which we get things done now. We have one source of truth in PriceAdvantage, and we can trust the data to be accurate. It’s hard to pinpoint the revenue gained by getting accurate pricing to the stores fast, but I can tell you it’s significant,” shares Lapierre. Additionally, the integration between OPIS Radius Report and PriceAdvantage gives CEFCO real-time business intelligence. Lapierre notes, “Having real-time data is a killer advantage. Now we can see when a competitor moves, even if our store isn’t watching. Every fuel manager wishes he had more eyes watching competitors for them.”
Rutter’s: Embracing Technology to Optimize Fuel Prices and Streamline Price Changes
Client:Rutter’s Location:Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Maryland Number of Stores:85
Rutter’s is the oldest vertically integrated food company in the U.S. In 1683, the Rutter family — farmers from Germany — settled in Pennsylvania. In 1747, the family acquired 167 acres of farmland in York, PA, which remains the site of the Rutter’s headquarters today. The Rutter’s Dairy business began in 1921, and the first Rutter’s Farm Store opened in 1968.
In 2019, the convenience store chain turned 50 and now operates 85 stores throughout Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Maryland. The company is recognized as an industry leader with the latest advancements in technology, sustainability, consumer marketing, and philanthropy.
Rutter’s continuously evaluates technology solutions to enhance both internal operations and the customer experience. This led them to install Skyline LED price signs in 2004 and implement PriceAdvantage in 2010.
Rutter’s selected PriceAdvantage to achieve three main goals:
Optimize fuel prices to increase fuel margins and gross fuel profits.
Automatically execute price changes to the point-of-sale, pumps, and price signs.
Communicate prices to the GasBuddy and Rutter’s loyalty mobile apps.
“Being able to remotely change prices, with little to no human assistance needed, is vital to maintaining our business – and during the 2020 pandemic, this automation was even more critical,” Chris imparted. “Not having to worry about the logistical side of changing fuel prices allows me to coordinate my time appropriately.”
Chris Hartman
Vice President of Fuels, Advertising and Development,Rutter's
Results
Fuel Price Optimization
PriceAdvantage seamlessly integrates with Rutter’s existing technologies, including PDI back-office software. The PDI integration allows PriceAdvantage to easily import and aggregate all of the critical fuel pricing data – such as replacement costs, volumes, and monthly targets. Store employees can enter competitor price surveys directly into PriceAdvantage, which reminds store employees when surveys are due and alerts them when surveys are late.
PriceAdvantage then optimizes fuel prices based on the pricing strategies and goals Chris established within the software. “I establish pricing rules for our stores within PriceAdvantage – including considerations for competitors, desired margins, etc.,” shared Chris. “I look at PriceAdvantage each morning, and throughout the day, to review all of our stores and ensure we are priced appropriately. Using PriceAdvantage, I am able to quickly react to market movement at my desk and on my mobile phone.”
Price Change Execution and Price Change Confirmation
PriceAdvantage enables Chris to make rapid, informed fuel pricing decisions based on the proposed, optimized prices within PriceAdvantage. He can quickly review, approve, and automatically post new prices to the NCR Radiant and Comdata Trendar point-of-sale (POS) systems, fuel pumps and price signs, and then receive price change confirmation – all in just minutes.
The confirmation provides Chris confidence that prices were indeed updated correctly and, if desired, he can even look at the associated timestamp.
Updating GasBuddy Business Pages and Rutter’s Loyalty Mobile Apps
The PriceAdvantage integration with GasBuddy ensures that consumers view the most recent and accurate Rutter’s fuel prices on the GasBuddy platform by communicating Rutter’s current fuel prices as often as every fifteen minutes directly to GasBuddy. It puts public-facing prices in the control of Rutter’s, rather than have Rutter’s rely on crowd-sourced prices – which can be old or inaccurate.
Additionally, PriceAdvantage communicates current prices directly to the Rutter’s customer loyalty mobile app. Both of these automatic updates remove manual processes that can cause delays and errors – affording the Rutter’s team valuable time to focus on other tasks.
Business Intelligence and Analytics
PriceAdvantage provides robust reports and analytics, including detailed information on Rutter’s volumes, price history, profits, and costs.
Like many fuel retailers, Rutter’s also leverages third-party business intelligence tools to analyze fuel sales as well as correlate fuel performance to the company’s overall performance. Rutter’s can extract this data from PriceAdvantage via standard reports or through the PriceAdvantage API.
The Sign of Success
Rutter’s utilizes electronic fuel price signs from Skyline Products, the parent company of PriceAdvantage, to leverage the industry-exclusive communications between PriceAdvantage and Skyline price signs. The unique integration allows Chris to receive an automatic confirmation that the price changed successfully and is displayed correctly on the price sign – even from his cell phone.
“We are in a very competitive fuel market. If our sign is not working, or incorrect, we need to know so that customers don’t see a wrong price or think we’re closed,” shared Chris. “Also, PriceAdvantage ensures that the price change process prevents us from having a posted sign price that is lower than the pump price. The combination of PriceAdvantage and Skyline price signs mitigates these issues.”
Additionally, PriceAdvantage Sign Diagnostics allows the Rutter’s facilities team to view the current health status of all their Skyline price signs. The Rutter’s facilities team can pull detailed diagnostic information from any Skyline sign – making sign maintenance faster, more efficient, and less expensive.
“If our sign is not working, or incorrect, we need to know so that customers don’t see a wrong price or think we’re closed.”
-Chris Hartman, Vice President of Fuels, Advertising and Development
Royal Farms Plows Operational Costs Down and Drives Profits Up
Client:Royal Farms Location:Mid-Atlantic Region Number of Stores:250+
Royal Farms convenience stores dot the Mid-Atlantic region offering freshly prepared foods, convenience items, and value-priced fuel. With retail fuel being the largest revenue driver at more than 250 locations and significant profits reliant on well-timed penny price changes, Royal Farms needed to more efficiently and effectively manage fuel prices. Partnering with PriceAdvantage, the retailer took a simple, three-step approach to do just that.
Step 1: Fuel pricing decisions were centralized and made at the home office.
Step 2: Skyline electronic price signs were installed, enabling store managers and employees to conveniently update fuel prices from inside the store.
Step 3: Fuel price changes were automated using PriceAdvantage fuel price management software, which empowered the company to change prices at all 250+ stores within minutes instead of days and confirm that the changes took place.
“We saved half a penny per gallon, driving record fuel sales and profitability in the first year. This was largely due to automation with PriceAdvantage software and Skyline electronic price signs.”
x – Rob Rinehart, Director of Retail Petroleum
Results
Controlling the Fuel Pricing Strategy
With stores in Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia, the company struggled to regulate prices and implement a single-minded pricing strategy across the region, which stunted fuel profitability and gallons performance. Although the company received daily competitive pricing surveys through PDI’s competitive report, several stores would inevitably fail to submit their daily reports. Sometimes it would take days to gather the necessary information from lagging stores. “We would have to call back three times to speak to the store manager. It was taking two people half a day every day to get through the fuel pricing process,” recounts Rinehart.
Partnering with PriceAdvantage, Royal Farms restructured fundamental operations and streamlined key processes to maximize overall gross profit on a per store basis. The first step was to put fuel pricing strategy back in the control of the home office. This improved pricing consistency and increased profits significantly.
Delayed Price Changes Are Expensive
Manual price changes presented additional challenges. First of all, it took 12–72 hours on average for a price change to be implemented. Often, if a price change was announced on Friday evening, the change would not be implemented until Monday morning. Lost revenue estimates were staggering. Secondly, changing the price signs manually took employees away from their most important task (serving customers) for more than 30 minutes. Thirdly, worker’s compensation claims related to physically updating price signs chipped away at profits.
Rinehart implemented Skyline’s electronic price signs so prices could be changed from inside the store. Employees no longer had to brave wet or icy conditions or bear summer’s stifling heat and humidity to update prices. Stores embraced the new electronic signs. “Soon, other stores began asking when they would be getting these signs,” said Rinehart. The solution increased convenience for in-store employees, minimized injury risks, and curtailed customer-facing disruptions, allowing employees better serve customers.
Increasing Profits by Reducing Human Errors
The human factor could not be ignored either. Delayed price changes and data entry errors prevented the company from realizing higher profits. “We discovered that 25–50 percent of the stores had not made price changes from the previous day,” recalls Rinehart. “And, once a month a store would enter a price like $.25, and we’d be selling fuel at a quarter for half a day.” To make matters worse, some store managers arranged unsanctioned “friends and family hour” during which time fuel prices were deliberately discounted.
Clearly, the company needed to find a way to better regulate store operations and safely expedite and confirm price changes.
Rinehart automated price changes in a closed-loop system using PriceAdvantage fuel price management software. This allows Rinehart to make price changes to all 250+ stores in a matter of minutes, and receive confirmation that the changes took place. “We were able to calculate the increase in profitability with the electronic price signs, but adding the fuel pricing software is when we saw the real returns,” said Rinehart. “There is an art to fuel pricing. You can’t replace your strategy with an algorithm. You can, however, gain a strong competitive advantage by automating the execution of your strategy.” He added, “This market is a penny-up, penny-down game. PriceAdvantage gives me all the information I need to create the optimal price for each store, and then have it posted at the street quickly.”
Price Changes in Minutes, Not Days
Royal Farms expected and achieved tangible, measurable results from their modernization and automation efforts. “We now have market knowledge, a centralized strategy, confirmation of price changes and evidence to prove it. What used to take 12–72 hours per store now takes less than an hour for all 250 stores,” stated Rinehart. “We saw a return on our investment in half the time I had originally estimated. We made changes that let us focus on beating the competition and maximizing our profitability for every store, every day.”
The modernization project also improved corporate culture, an unexpected secondary effect. By removing barriers, simplifying processes and increasing transparency, store managers are more compliant, shifting their positions from “Corporate will never know,” to “Let’s get it done.” Store managers have embraced the changes because the modernizations have made their lives easier and because there are enforceable consequences for noncompliance.
Contains information related to marketing campaigns of the user. These are shared with Google AdWords / Google Ads when the Google Ads and Google Analytics accounts are linked together.
90 days
__utma
ID used to identify users and sessions
2 years after last activity
__utmt
Used to monitor number of Google Analytics server requests
10 minutes
__utmb
Used to distinguish new sessions and visits. This cookie is set when the GA.js javascript library is loaded and there is no existing __utmb cookie. The cookie is updated every time data is sent to the Google Analytics server.
30 minutes after last activity
__utmc
Used only with old Urchin versions of Google Analytics and not with GA.js. Was used to distinguish between new sessions and visits at the end of a session.
End of session (browser)
__utmz
Contains information about the traffic source or campaign that directed user to the website. The cookie is set when the GA.js javascript is loaded and updated when data is sent to the Google Anaytics server
6 months after last activity
__utmv
Contains custom information set by the web developer via the _setCustomVar method in Google Analytics. This cookie is updated every time new data is sent to the Google Analytics server.
2 years after last activity
__utmx
Used to determine whether a user is included in an A / B or Multivariate test.
18 months
_ga
ID used to identify users
2 years
_gali
Used by Google Analytics to determine which links on a page are being clicked
30 seconds
_ga_
ID used to identify users
2 years
_gid
ID used to identify users for 24 hours after last activity
24 hours
_gat
Used to monitor number of Google Analytics server requests when using Google Tag Manager
1 minute
SourceBuster is used by WooCommerce for order attribution based on user source.
Name
Description
Duration
sbjs_session
The number of page views in this session and the current page path
30 minutes
sbjs_udata
Information about the visitor’s user agent, such as IP, the browser, and the device type
session
sbjs_first
Traffic origin information for the visitor’s first visit to your store (only applicable if the visitor returns before the session expires)
session
sbjs_current
Traffic origin information for the visitor’s current visit to your store
session
sbjs_first_add
Timestamp, referring URL, and entry page for your visitor’s first visit to your store (only applicable if the visitor returns before the session expires)
session
sbjs_current_add
Timestamp, referring URL, and entry page for your visitor’s current visit to your store
session
sbjs_migrations
Technical data to help with migrations between different versions of the tracking feature
