Petroleum marketers, distributors and suppliers addressed technology solutions at the education session moderated by Roy Strasburger, president of StrasGlobal, a provider of contract retail management services. Workshop panelists included Allison Wroe, director of marketing for PriceAdvantage; Drew Mize, EVP and GM for PDI Software; and David Freese, CEO and chief product officer with Titan Cloud Software.
The panel discussed several technology/automation solutions across the supply chain to help businesses compete and stay relevant, including optimizing labor management, modeling for customer buying patterns, integrating data across the entire eco-system and data diagnostics and analytics, among others.
Wroe used the “Check Engine Light” metaphor to explain how data highlights the health and status of a business—essentially integrating, monitoring and correlating data analytics across the business eco-system and giving guidance on actions to take.
Addressing the question about how to successfully migrate systems and integrate across evolving M&A ecosystems, Mize reinforced how important it is to protect the integrity of business data, citing examples of significant shrink reduction, foodservice sales increases and labor savings when integrated systems are “allowed to do their jobs.”
Freese explained how data from forecourt OEM devices coupled with anomaly detection and diagnostics can minimize and/or prevent unnecessary fueling position shutdowns. Best practice starts with data quality and classifying whether alarms and alerts are true or false positives, then determining what action steps to take he said.
All agreed that insuring data integrity across the entire eco-system is critical to dealing with the full range of mega-trends impacting the petroleum and retail convenience supply chain. For more information, visit www.sigma.org.
