Technology-driven experiences are everywhere. From iPhone to Netflix, customers buy products and order services literally with their fingertips. If you’re a Digital Native, the thought of doing anything manually–like driving to the store or going to rent an actual movie–might be foreign to you. And when it comes to business processes, manual processes seem downright archaic.

Technology helps companies in every sector automate labor-intensive backend processes and customer-facing services. Cloud technology has the power to revolutionize fuel delivery in our industry. With a commodity such as fuel, it’s nearly impossible to track workflows, vendors, tanks and leak lines, or fuel usage without some automation in place, at least with any accuracy.

While the processes you’ve been using may be good enough, the retail fuel industry is evolving faster every day. Efficiency and productivity can differentiate your business from the forecourt down the street. Fuel delivery automation is paving the way.

Innovation as a Competitive Advantage

Technology is capable of integrating into your operation’s backend systems while at the same time streamlining your operation on the front end. Here are five ways innovation can give you a competitive advantage.

1. Achieve better workflows. Using many technology systems for site management can leave you feeling like your information is scattered and difficult to access. You may have a decentralized process spread across various divisions. You may have to manually update spreadsheets. You may not have a standard operating procedure to manage compliance. You may be managing work orders haphazardly.

If so, this all translates to poor efficiency and lost revenue. Whether it’s to track maintenance orders from entry to completion or pipeline repairs, fuel delivery automation can help you run your business at peak efficiency and greatest profitability.

2. Save time. You can review past alarms, tie them to specific tanks, identify issues with theft, carriers, or leaks and analyze the time of discovery. Knowing when and why alarms are triggered represents crucial data points that can improve response time. Our software gives owners the ability to escalate workflows with custom notifications, ensuring critical tasks are taken care of immediately.

Also, when you’re operating many convenience stores, vendor management can become a critical profit (or loss) center. The ability to integrate vendors into the platform can improve efficiency dramatically. Instead of laboring over paper files that are hard to transfer and analyze, you can automate vendor data feeds, streamlining the entire process.

3. Improve outcomes. Software lets you check tanks and line leaks around the clock so a leak never goes undetected. It can also correct common ATG configuration issues, minimizing shutdowns.

No one wants to lose a customer to the competition, especially over something preventable like an unavailable or slow fueling nozzle. Automation creates frictionless fueling. Technology can monitor and prevent slow fuel and nozzle unavailability. It can simultaneously check tank levels and track fuel use to reduce the duration and frequency of tank shutdowns.

4. Mitigate risk. When you improve alarm efficiency, you’re better able to manage risk. Alarms set for overfill, high or low product inventory, will generate reports you can then analyze. You can review past alarms and tie them to specific tanks to create a fuel delivery model. This model lets you plan based on historical data and real-time forecasting for timely fuel refills. It’s not just a leak you have to be concerned about. You can lose sales if you run out of fuel.

5. Minimize errors. Automation at the pump provides the lowest possible inventory variance by correcting for common sources of error, such as the tank chart, meter drift, temperature, and vapor loss. No one wants to lose a customer to competition, especially over something preventable like an unavailable or slow fueling position.

Wrap Up

There are many reasons to automate fuel delivery. For one, the software lets you focus on the real issues rather than the process of moving paper from one point to another. Also, a robust cloud solution provides a simple one-stop-shop of actionable analytics. You can improve both the customer experience and increase fuel sales when you invest in fuel delivery software.

Leaders in the convenience store industry have always turned to technology that helps maximize revenue. But in a year like 2020, software solutions that provide high returns are vital to continuing operations. That’s why Titan Cloud focuses on creating software that helps users manage their business more efficiently for a greater return on their software investment. Titan offers a range of solutions for environmental compliance, wetstock management and facility maintenance, but the shortest and easiest path to a great ROI is with Titan’s tank shutdown analytics.  

While flow rate, nozzle downs, and inventory management are all important, if a tank is shut down, it’s not pumping fuel. If the tank isn’t pumping fuel, then there are zero fuel sales and your customer leaves the site. Minimizing tank shutdown events requires a focus on reducing both the duration and frequency of shutdowns. Reducing the frequency, in particular, has an enormous impact. We have learned from our customers that sub-optimal ATG configuration drives most preventable shutdown events. Fortunately, Titan has the most advanced ATG configuration tools on the market. 

One primary example of the negative impact of tank shutdowns comes from a customer who implemented Titan Cloud software because their tanks were frequently shut down due to groundwater alarms. Even though the alarms were only for the diesel pump, it was shutting down all the tanks for the entire facility and not allowing any fuel movement. Across all of their facilities, this meant this retailer lost sales of about $550,000 on more than 240,000 gallons of fuel per month. 

Right away, Titan identified the configuration issues and corrected the gauge programming so that only the pumps that were impacted would shut down and so that other fuel sales could continue. In just one month of using Titan solutions, our customer went from losing fuel sales of more than 240,000 gallons to less than 60,000 gallons, and after four months had reduced their average loss by more than 83%.  

It can be easy for owners and operators to think their ATG programming is “good enough,” but without optimizing ATG and alarm configurations, convenience stores can lose out on thousands or even millions of dollars in sales. That’s why Titan Cloud’s software help users identify inefficiencies and streamline store processes, so owners and operators can become more profitable and get a greater return on their software investment. While there are still plenty of opportunities to increase fuel sales by optimizing flow rate, inventory variance, and other aspects of the customer fueling experience, operators must first minimize tank shutdowns or else there is no fuel to sell.  

Want to learn more about how to optimize your fuel program for greater profitability? 

Get in touch with one of our specialists, so you can start generating a greater ROI today. 

By Tim Tang (Hughes) based on an interview with Titan Cloud Director of Product Management, Clay Moore

The Internet of Things (IoT) has enormous potential to transform modern business with the innovations that are developing every day. For the convenience store industry, one IoT opportunity involves technology that has been deployed for decades: the Automatic Tank Gauge (ATG). Routinely used by almost all modern businesses that store or depend on the distribution of fuel, the ATG is an electronic version of the dipstick that is dropped into an underground tank to assess fuel levels. 

Beyond tracking fuel inventories, the ATG–with its direct telemetry with installed probes and sensors across the forecourt–holds tremendous potential for improving customer experience, increasing operational efficiencies, and protecting the business against compliance risks. 

Common ATG Challenges: Misconfiguration 

To fully realize the business potential in the ATG, the first place to start is by resolving common configuration problems. Improperly configured ATGs overwhelm store operators with unnecessary alarms. This not only distracts them from their daily responsibilities, it also trains them to ignore these incessant alerts—like the boy who cried wolf—which can be dangerous in those instances when the system is alarming on critical issues, such as fuel leaks or overfill events, in which the ATG may be warning the operator that the tank has been overfilled and fuel is literally spilling out of the exhaust vents. However, because of frequent false or trivial alarms, the store clerk often learns to ignore this box in the backroom that beeps periodically throughout the week. The danger is that in those few instances when the alarm is valid and critical, spilled or leaked fuel not only represents wasted inventories that should have been sold;  it also causes costly regulatory fines and clean ups that a year of margins may be unable to make up. A far better practice is to learn to manage the ATG’s parameters properly to ensure these alerts represent true positives and to couple that with the right software tools to help guide the appropriate response. 

In addition to the nuisance of unnecessary alarms, misconfigured ATGs can also unnecessarily shut down all the dispensers at a location. There are some alert conditions that are severe, but most should only require the shutdown of an individual affected dispenser or set of dispensers associated with the tank in question. When the ATG is misconfigured, an alert could result in a station-wide shutdown, interrupting the station’s ability to service customers. This not only causes an immediate loss of customers but also leads to the loss of future business as those same customers are unlikely to risk repeating the same experience. They may, temporarily or permanently, alter their commuting behavior and begin frequenting the station down the road instead of yours. 

Another common ATG misconfiguration misleads the operator into believing that his tanks are critically low, shutting down dispensers. The system does this by design to avoid stirring up sludge in the bottom of  the tank and risking the introduction of air into the system. An opposite misconfiguration tells the operator there is more fuel than is actually available, resulting in a true run-out scenario—the bane of any fuel manager’s existence. In either case, improper tank probe settings almost always lead to lost sales and frustrated customers and operators. 

The good news is that many of these misconfigurations can be easily detected by the right software capable of analyzing data collected from the ATG and dispenser. With the right remote management capabilities, these and other configuration issues can both be identified and proactively resolved before they affect your bottom line. 

Common ATG Challenges: Inadequate Employee Training 

Another related problem compounded by the high employee turnover rate common in this industry is that on-site employees often do not know how to interpret ATG alarms and sometimes simply disarm them. Anything to stop that annoying beeping. As part of the recent EPA requirement for class A, B, and C operator training, employees must be fully trained on how to handle emergency situations. For your company, this could include supplemental training on what each key ATG alarm might mean and the appropriate action to take. Depending on the issue, some federal and state violations can be levied based on the number of transactions conducted after an issue was detected. For example, the station may be fined thousands of dollars for each transaction conducted after an ATG logged a leak event. When an employee repeatedly ignores valid alarms, they not only put the station at risk of a dangerous situation, they perpetuate avoidable financial loss. 

ATG Opportunities: Improving the Customer Experience 

In the convenience store industry, a crucial component of the customer experience is the speed at which the fuel dispenser is able to deliver product. There is quite a discernible difference between an eight gallon and a four gallon per minute flow rate. The former marks a satisfying customer experience. The latter tests your customer’s patience and brand loyalty. 

Like other retail industries, operators must be vigilant in details that directly impact their customers’ experience with their brand. Not every customer may take the time or opportunity to complain about a slow dispenser, but it is well understood that for every customer who complains, there are many more who drive off irritated an may or may not give you a second chance. Even worse, in this constantly connected worlds, customers may utilize one of many social platforms to vent their frustrations to the masses. Some consumers take it upon themselves to provide a “service” to the community by warning other of poor service wherever they find it. You don’t want to be caught in these cross-hairs consistently. This has a tangible business impact on your brand and causes a halo effect on other surrounding stations flying the same flag. A brand that has become associated with an unsatisfying experience undermines the business opportunity for other operators. This is why any large oil companies require strict adherence to branding standards by their dealers. However, the customer fueling experience is often missed on their surveys and secret shopper apps. 

In conjunction with a negative customer experience, there is also an even more quantifiable business impact of slow flow. A slow dispenser directly correlates to fewer fuel sales. Plain and simple, lower throughput equals less fuel sold. 

To measure the customer experience and throughput, an ATG stands front and center. It can be augmented with additional electronics, such as an electronic dispenser  interface module,  or EDIM, which brings in the dispenser loop data to allow flow rate tracking. By studying deviations from normal transaction trends across a system, fuel operators may accurately infer which dispensers are performing out of specifications. Critical data collected from ATGs can also be analyzed to triangulate not only flow rate issue but root causes. Whether a dirty filter, a failing dispenser component, or even poor fuel quality, the ATG can be used to identify and solve a multitude of issues. 

ATG Opportunities: Optimizing Fuel Inventories 

A longitudinal analysis of ATG data may reveal opportunities to improve the business. For example,  some  operators maintain extremely high fuel inventories of thousands of gallons continuously. When such levels are repeated across many convenience stores, they represent substantial corporate resources that are literally buried in the ground. Unturned fuel in the ground translates into dollars that could have been otherwise invested in the business. 

 ATG Opportunities: Centralized Data Collection & Automated Compliance 

A critical aspect of convenience store operations involves data collection to meet numerous state and federal regulatory compliance requirements. Accurate record keeping can be time-consuming and tedious for store operators. Risk management is a known cost of doing business in the petroleum industry. To provide additional store operation support and alleviate labor requirements, the ATG can be used in conjunction with mature software platforms to provide compliance and compliance reporting automation. 

In the case of emergencies, centralized alerting provides an additional layer of protection. For example, when a leak has been detected, true positive alarms should not only be going off at the convenience store, they should also be going off at the corporate office. Real-time alarming serves to prevent small accidents from turning into larger, more expensive ones. A critical success factor for real-time alarming is a high performance and reliable network connection at the store. If the network is suffering from congestion or an outage, the alarm will not be successfully transmitted. Multi-path SD-WAN solutions are a cost-effective way to address this critical need over broadband networks. 

Summary 

Ever present and mature, the ATG is an IoT device that can be used to enhance business. Proper ATG setting configuration and training are critical first steps. But after that is done, the data that can be accumulated from these devices allows significant automation and optimization of service and protection against risk. Store managers and fuel delivery teams need to work together to understand the data and make the adjustments necessary to achieve these benefits. Having a robust network that can transmit the data to the right decision makers will bring all of this together and create a new reality: a reality focused on the customer experience and proactive, automated environmental compliance. 

*This article was originally published in SIGMA Marketer’s IGM Magazine

It looks like Americans just can’t wait to get on the road again.

After months of shuttered doors and few travelers on the road, convenience store owners are beginning to see an increase in traffic as states continue lifting quarantine measures following the COVID-19 outbreak. The most recent NACS and PDI reports show that the number of workweek trips has increased to almost the same level as 2019. As states continue to open their cities one thing has become apparent: this will be the summer of road trips.

July and August are the most popular months for travel, but with most people still feeling uncertain about travelling by plane, many are altering their vacation plans to stay closer to home. In fact, Service Management Group found that 71% of people are less likely to travel by plane this summer. Instead, one-third of Americans will be taking a road trip in place of airline travel according to Gasbuddy’s 2020 Summer Travel Study. This is great news for convenience stores across the nation, but after weeks of waiting for more forecourt traffic, owners and operators need to ask themselves if they’re prepared for this sudden increase in customers.

If there was ever a time to take control of forecourt maintenance, it’s now. Even though customers’ main concern is cleanliness, they’re still expecting fast and convenient service instore and in the forecourt. To maximize uptime for each fueling asset, many owners and operators are turning to software solutions to help streamline their maintenance processes. Titan Cloud’s  maintenance platform offers a work order dispatch feature to expedite the process and manage tickets for better performance and fewer go-backs. With the addition of root-cause analysis, this solution provides the transparency that owners and operators need to improve their assets and processes before crowds of vacationers start showing up.

Preparing for lots of customers also means preparing to give them a frictionless fueling experience. Now more than ever, owners and operators need to prioritize minimizing nozzle downs, runouts, and flow rates. ATG monitoring systems can solve these and other problems by providing data and analytics that help make inventory management easier. With Titan’s advanced fuel analytics solution, owners and operators can even pinpoint when to replenish inventory (and by how much) so their fueling positions  stay open and ready for customers.

With most summer vacations just around the corner, owners and operators need to use this time to prepare for the road trippers by streamlining inventory and maintenance processes.

To talk to someone about the Titan Cloud solutions that can help do just that.