Boasting more than 8,000 stores in North America alone, Circle K is one of the world’s largest fuel retailers.
When Brent Puzak, Director of North American Environmental Shared Services for Circle K, was asked to find best practices that would help the retailer align more completely on a software solution that could reduce risk and cost for 8,000 facilities, he turned to Titan Cloud.
Improving alarm efficiency
Alarms are triggered by numerous events. Overfill, high-product or low-product and interstitial alarms are just a few examples of the possible alarm conditions at Circle K—and many other convenience store chains.
By turning to a cloud software solution, retailers can collect alarm data, which helps them identify areas of weakness and other issues.
For instance, Titan’s alarm management solution provides Circle K with data on when alarms occur, how long the alarms are in an active state, and when alarms close. By leveraging this information, Circle K can review past alarms, tie them to specific tanks and identify issues with theft, carriers, leaks and more.
These alarms generate activities within the Titan Cloud platform, notifying the correct individual and ensuring critical tasks are undertaken immediately.
This detailed data lets Circle K analyze its time of discovery and response time, leading to measurable improvements in both categories as processes are streamlined.
For retailers who want detailed information about their alarms, cloud-based software such as the solutions offered from Titan Cloud can offer great benefits.
A single platform for all store data
Puzak said that with Titan Cloud’s software platform, what was once a manual and decentralized process became a simpler, “one-stop shop.” Before making the switch to cloud solutions, Circle K had 15 separate solutions, as well as various Access DBs and spreadsheets across the divisions, with no standardized operating procedures to manage compliance and risk.
By switching to cloud solutions, retailers can experience the benefits of using a comprehensive platform that provides actionable analytics which help prompt swift responses, manage compliance and limit remediation.
“[Titan Cloud] gave us the ability to pull all of that information together into one spot. It allowed us to pick and choose what type of release detection we wanted to use based on whether it was a high-throughput store or not,” Puzak said. “We could use SIR for high throughput tanks, and for the lower volume tanks, we could use CSLD where we didn’t have throughput issues.”
Root-cause analysis and vendor integration offered by cloud solutions
Root-cause analysis, offered by cloud solutions, helps stores collect information surrounding alarm usage and more. Circle K uses the automated testing vendor interface and alarms within the Titan Cloud solution for root-cause analysis. This allows the store to collect actionable data regarding each activity or alarm that a team member receives and log critical information like the cause, issue type and resolution.
Additionally, testing vendors including Tanknology and Crompco, were integrated into the platform via a standard interface that dramatically improved efficiency. Titan Cloud also allowed Circle K to own their data and their testing schedule, which offered the chain huge cost savings. What’s more, instead of laboring over paper files that were tremendously hard to parse, transfer, and analyze, Circle K now uses Titan Cloud’s platform to automate vendor data feeds.
For convenience retailers, being able to streamline their vendor data feeds as well as their alarm system data can not only offer stores better information about what’s going on but can also inform their decision-making processes and identify pain points.
“Titan allows our team to focus on the true issues rather than focus on the process of moving paper from one point to another,” Puzak said.
To learn more about how Titan Cloud helped Circle K, click here to read the entire case study, and to learn more about how cloud solutions can help store retailers all over, visit titancloud.com.
This post is sponsored by Titan Cloud