by Ian Thompson, Executive VP, Global Solutions Consultancy
Automated pricing processes can feel like a risk. How will you know if your prices are optimized? Can you really depend on a software solution to boost profit? And how will you feel giving up some control over pricing tactics?
By Ethan Walker, Solutions Consultant
Utter the word "automation" in a room full of people with diverse careers and histories. Some will shudder. Some will ignore. Some will start to get excited at the possibilities. Utter it in a room full of best-in-class fuel pricing analysts, and they're liable to start clapping. While automation is sometimes perceived as threatening, scary or "too difficult," it is absolutely essential from an overall efficiency standpoint. And at the end of the day, it equates to increased revenue, which analysts and executives alike happen to enjoy.
Our high-performance race car is almost complete. We have pulled together a powerful turbo engine, great telemetry, winning powertrain, fantastic crew and the right spoilers and wings. In relation to our convenience store, we are set up for success with great facilities, the right data and analysis of the competition, excellent operations, the right merchandise and world-class pricing.
In Part 1, I introduced the analogy of the convenience retailer as a finely tuned performance car in a challenging race for volume. We explored pricing as the turbo charger, best used in short bursts for growing margin and exploiting daily opportunities, but not the best way to maintain or grow market share. We also looked at how dropping prices across the board to increase volume often results in price wars and minimal volume growth at reduced margins.
You don't always have control over your promotional items, and that means you don't always have a plan to understand their effects on sitewide sales. Your gut instinct on what works and what doesn't is a good start, but is it giving you all the strategic support you need? Access to critical, integrated data can raise your game to the next level.
Convenience isn't a one-size fits all business. Best-practice retailers know that their offering needs to be adapted to their demographic and current site and retail network strategy. The trends emerging as the convenience concept evolves are as important to consider as the role you play in this evolution.
by Marianne Hillhouse, Account Executive and Susan Ertl, Retail Network Planning Consultant
Information is indeed power. For every business, information sells. And for every product at a site — fuel and convenience retail, quick service restaurant or car wash — information leads to sound decisions (and those decisions make money).
By Anila Siraj, EVP of Research and Applied Data Sciences
The concept of artificial intelligence has gained increasing importance in our daily conversations over the last two decades or so, but it actually existed long before. Forbes begins the timeline of AI at 1308, when "Catalan poet and theologian Ramon Llull publishe(d) Ars generalis ultima (The Ultimate General Art), further perfecting his method of using paper-based mechanical means to create new knowledge from combinations of concepts."
In Part 1, I introduced the analogy of the convenience retailer as a finely tuned performance car in a challenging race for volume. We explored pricing as the turbo charger, best used in short bursts for growing margin and exploiting daily opportunities, but not the best way to maintain or grow market share. We also looked at how dropping prices across the board to increase volume often results in price wars and minimal volume growth at reduced margins.
