Customer - Sheetz

Smart Teams and Smart Systems Save Sheetz $141,000

Client: Sheetz
Location: Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Ohio, and North Carolina
Number of Stores: 435

When Sheetz wanted to reduce expenses at 360 convenience stores in Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Ohio, and North Carolina, Mark Wilson, Director of Store Support, turned to PriceAdvantage™ software to streamline and automate processes. The decision resulted in:

  • Estimated $141,000 annual savings in maintenance service costs.

  • Additional $460,000 annual savings is expected from pending software integrations.

  • Onsite service calls dropped 49% because of the ability to remotely reset price signs.

  • Providing store managers about 50 hours per year more in customer face time—helping Sheetz provide its trademark friendly, fast, quality customer care.

"We estimate PriceAdvantage will drive $141,000 in annual cost savings, and give store managers up to 50 extra hours annually per store to spend with our customers."

Mark Wilson, Director of Store Support

Results

Faced with four major challenges—expensive service calls, pricing errors, delays in updating prices, and time consuming fuel pricing processes—Wilson knew that automations and integrations could significantly impact maintenance costs, increase efficiency, and maximize labor and technology resources.

“Managing our costs helps keep costs low for our customers,” says Wilson. “We have to keep getting better at what we do.” To that end, Wilson piloted PriceAdvantage in ten stores, testing two changes:

1) the ability to manage and reset electronic price signs remotely from headquarters or from within the store, and

2) the ability to remotely manage prices on electronic price signs from a central location.

These two improvements yield an annual savings of $141,000 in service maintenance and increase the availability of the store managers up to 50 hours annually per store. With 360 stores in the mid-Atlantic region, the company could realize an additional 18,000 hours of customer service and selling time each year. “The software gave us all of that in a usable, understandable, teachable and trainable package,” Wilson says.

“The smarter the systems are that we place in the stores, the better information we have at headquarters. That’s what we look for in technology today.”

In addition, PriceAdvantage fueled:
• a 49% reduction in on-site service calls by remotely resetting price signs;
• the ability to instantly react to competitive market changes, thereby maximizing revenue opportunities;
• the ability to proactively head off potential problems with remote monitoring and dynamic notification of pricing errors;
• lower total service costs; and
• a reduction in system downtime, inaccurate price changes, and amount of time to make a price change.

Employees, especially store managers, were happier and more productive as store managers had more time to do what they do best, manage their stores and spend time with customers.

“Our overriding team goal is to ensure that store managers can maximize their time with our customers,” Wilson says. “This is a key corporate initiative and competitive advantage for Sheetz. To achieve that, I look for the smartest, most efficient technology in our devices that will allow for low maintenance and high productivity. PriceAdvantage gives us that…directly impacting our top line revenue.”

What started as a test has become a foundational shift in Sheetz store operations. Integrations between the Radiant Systems POS, the pump, and the Skyline Electronic Price Display allow headquarters staff to remotely update fuel prices in the field. Best of all, the prices can be updated not only from a desktop or laptop, but on mobile devices as well. Partnering with Radiant Systems, Skyline’s PriceAdvantage is expected to free up another $460,000 annually to re-allocate to additional systems and resources.

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