Solutions:
Keep in touch with critical measures of success while you’re on the road.
Retail fuel profit margins are more fragile than ever with today’s volatile fuel costs. Make timely, competitive decisions by using Pinnacle’s business intelligence solution, EPM, with mobile technology. Keep your margin data at your fingertips and take action at a moment’s notice.

Pinnacle’s Enterprise Performance Management™ (EPM) is business intelligence at its best. This modular set of tools collects and analyzes store data quickly and accurately showing trends and exceptions to make decisions fast. Critical data can be accessed in near real-time on web-enabled devices in the home office or while the user travels. EPM puts you in control of your business at an affordable price.

“Looking at a dashboard that provides both timely and useful data has become a daily part of our operations. It is great to have one place to go for fuel sales and margins. EPM-70 does just that.” – Phil Boitz, WSCO, IT Director

 

Get real time fuel inventory information on your mobile device.

Pinnacle’s Dispatcher Workstation provides real time tank inventory information for mobile users. Drivers can access Real Time Inventory information and make informed alternate delivery decisions when necessary.

Dispatcher Workstation™ displays real-time fuel inventory information in an easy to view format allowing you to quickly discern your current inventory status. With a simple glance, dispatchers or fuel buyers that are responsible for replenishment, load scheduling and delivery, and keeping track of multiple location fuel monitoring can benefit by determining which locations require prompt attention.
Get instant access to fuel delivery status and bills of lading on your mobile device.

Andalé provides real-time delivery status information and Bill of Lading info for fuel dispatch and delivery. By having access to the delivery status, operators are able to optimize equipment and personnel. Optimization saves money by using fewer resources to do more work.

Pinnacle’s Andalé is an easy to use, web-based solution focused on the automation of the fuel supply chain from the point fuel is ordered by a retailer, until it is delivered by the wholesaler.

“The biggest challenge during implementation of Andalé was convincing the petroleum truck drivers that accessing emails and the internet on their Blackberry was a painless process. Once we convinced them to give it a try, our drivers were surprised with how easy it was to use, and we were surprised at how quickly they adapted.” – Debbie Butler, Business Administrator, Fuel South, Inc.

Solutions:

Capture Bills of Lading (BOLs) in real time and deliver that information to your home office.

Only with bill of lading information can you accurately calculate the cost of your existing inventory. Pinnacle’s Andalé can bring bill of lading, split drop, and splash-blend information back to the home office in real time for you to make informed pricing decisions and process invoices immediately.

“Andalé has given us a quicker response time in evaluating our inventory, giving the ability to know our in ground cost of inventory on a daily basis. It has also reduced labor cost with the efficiencies gained from more accurate bill of lading information. Andalé is a great enhancement to Pinnacle’s Fuel Smart® solution. We have been impressed with the ease of implementation and how quickly our drivers have learned to use this application.”- Debbie Butler, Business Administrator, Fuel South, Inc.

Reduce your excess fuel inventories and maintain an economical “Just in Time” fuel inventory program.

More than ever with today’s fuel prices, petroleum marketers are looking for a “Just in Time” for fuel inventory solution. Pinnacle has the solution that will accurately provide a “Just in Time’ for fuel inventory management program.

Pinnacle’s Dispatcher Workstation™ displays real-time fuel inventory information in an easy to ready format allowing you to quickly discern your current inventory status. With a simple glance, dispatchers or fuel buyers that are responsible for replenishment, load scheduling and delivery, and tracking fuel at multiple locations can benefit by determining which locations require prompt attention.

Pinnacle’s Smart Buy™ solution streamlines the sales receipts and order processes by automating timing and requirements for fuel orders, optimization of inventory levels, determination of where to purchase fuel, transport selection, and carrier and/or driver instruction requirements. With the ability to capture so much of this data electronically, reduced maintenance is required from your staff.

“Since we’ve implemented Smart Buy, it has allowed us to reduce our average inventory turn for all products from 3.8 to 3.2 days (16%), and of no-lead [fuel] specifically from 3.3 to 2.7 days (18%). The ability to turn your inventory eleven to twelve times in a 30 day period helps you to get through the volatility of price spikes because we’re selling and adjusting retails as quickly as the prices are spiking.”  – Bob Carpentier, Fuel Director, Beacon & Bridge Markets

 

Utilize exception management to determine what fuel pricing adjustments should be made.

With Pinnacle’s Auditor Exception Management feature, you will get immediate feedback on tank levels, delivery costs, and sales data to determine what adjustments need to be made to fuel pricing and when to deliver more fuel.

Pinnacle’s Auditor™ leverages the power of the web to provide consistency of the user interface across all modules. Immediate feedback is provided to the auditing crew so they are aware of exceptions, which can be customized to validate data related to sales and cash accountability, fuel inventory categories, and merchandise inventories. Take your home office to a level of speed, effectiveness and efficiency that truly impacts profitability.

Solutions:

Give customers the opportunity to earn points when shopping at their grocery store, redeemable for PPG discounts at your store.

 Pinnacle’s Palm POS integrates with 3^rd party fuel coalition loyalty programs, so customers earn points at their grocery store and redeem those points for discounted fuel at your stores. This keeps them coming back to your stores to redeem their points for gas.

Pinnacle’s award winning Palm POS™ is the fastest, most robust touch screen point-of-sale in the market! Designed and developed specifically for the convenience petroleum industry, Palm’s touch screen interface and modular flexibility will ensure your operations are smooth and consumers get the service they demand.

Is your point-of-sale PCI compliant?  Pinnacle’s Palm POS is!

 

Quickly compare competitive fuel pricing data to make informed decisions.

Knowing what the competition is doing relative to fuel pricing is key in driving those consumers to your store and not to the competition. Pinnacle’s Manager Workstation allows store managers to enter competitive pricing data and report it to the right people at the corporate office, to make the right decisions about fuel prices.

Covering a broad spectrum of functions, Pinnacle’s Manager Workstation™ is a suite of thin-client solutions designed to give you the advantages of browser-based web technology. Covering a broad spectrum of automated functions, Manager Workstation is designed exclusively for convenience store and petroleum retailers looking to lower the total cost of ownership while delivering powerful store manager workstation functionality.

“The real efficiency Pinnacle’s Manager Workstation has provided for our company has been the ability to make changes a lot quicker. If a store manager has a problem, we’re able to make a change on-the-fly.” – John Dilsaver, CFO, Rite Way Oil   

 

Review how customers are paying for their fuel to determine what type of discounting you should implement.

Through Pinnacle Auditor’s Exception Manager and Reporting solutions, review how consumers are paying for fuel – cash vs. credit cards – to determine what discounting you should implement. Cash vs. credit pricing is one potential option to drive additional consumers into your stores.

Pinnacle’s Auditor™ is part of Pinnacle’s suite of browser-based solutions leveraging the power of the web to provide consistency of the user interface across all modules and a common database. Immediate feedback is provided to the auditing crew so they are aware of exceptions, which can be customized to validate data related to sales and cash accountability, fuel inventory categories, and merchandise inventories. Take your home office to a level of speed, effectiveness and efficiency that truly impacts profitability.

1.Fund Holds – When a customer uses a debit or credit card, the bank puts a hold on funds for a period of time. With total fuel transactions rising due to price, those fund holds are more inconvenient than ever.

2. Upper Limits on Pay-at-the-Pump – Banks and payment processors often impose an upper limit on a pay-at-the-pump transaction amount. With higher fuel prices, larger vehicles often trigger this threshold before their tank is full.

Solution:

Offer real time clearing of transactions and adjust your own upper threshold for pay-at-the-pump transactions.

The latest Pinnacle Palm POS NIMs include Real Time Clearing (RTC) functionality. With RTC, transactions will be processed almost immediately instead of at the end of the day. This can significantly reduce the hold times that financial institutions place on cardholders’ accounts. Stores will send a final transaction amount within hours – if not minutes – of a cardholder’s purchase.  Without RTC support, card transaction processing can take up to two days or more to settle.

Palm POS also allows retailers to configure pre-auth amounts, adjusting it to whatever amount makes sense for your market and your customers.

Pinnacle’s award winning Palm POS™ is the fastest, most robust touch screen point-of-sale in the market! Designed and developed specifically for the convenience petroleum industry, Palm’s touch screen interface and modular flexibility will ensure your operations are smooth and consumers get the service they demand.

Is your point-of-sale PCI compliant?  Pinnacle’s Palm POS is!

“No other POS System is as well rounded as Pinnacle’s Palm POS.” –Jeremie Myhren, Senior Director of IT, Road Ranger

Solutions:

Improve your fuel margins.

Pinnacle’s Palm POS has valuable features that can help retail chains improve their margin. Palm’s cash/credit pricing option can influence more people to tender with cash rather than cards with expensive interchange rates. Palm also supports cash acceptors at the dispenser so you can accept cash for pay-at-the pump transactions. Finally, with Real Time Clearing (RTC) functionality, transactions will be processed almost immediately instead of at the end of the day, and can qualify retailers for better interchange rates.

Pinnacle’s award winning Palm POS™ is the fastest, most robust touch screen point-of-sale in the market! Designed and developed specifically for the convenience petroleum industry, Palm’s touch screen interface and modular flexibility will ensure your operations are smooth and consumers get the service they demand.

Is your point-of-sale PCI compliant?  Pinnacle’s Palm POS is!

“The Palm data has affected everybody, increased customer happiness, we leverage the data that we get from the dispensers to know when they need service, when they’re out of service, when they’re out of receipt paper and that kind of thing, and that’s just something that we simply were unable to do prior to implementing Pinnacle Palm.” – Jeremie Myhren, Senior Director of IT, Road Ranger

 

Reconcile fuel invoices automatically.
Pinnacle’s Fuel Smart reconciles invoices automatically. A very small error can drive your fuel costs up substantially. Fuel Smart processes accurate invoices for payment immediately, and presents erroneous invoices for examination and correction by your supplier.

Fuel Smart® was specifically created for petroleum retailers and wholesalers looking for a system that doesn’t require compromise. Using up-to-the-minute data captured electronically from various sources, Fuel Smart boosts profits by knowing how to help you capitalize on your opportunities. Buy, sell, inventory, and account for fuel in a smarter and easier way with Fuel Smart.

“In the current environment, the ability to tightly control both credit policies and accounts receivable is paramount to being successful. Based on what I’ve seen, Fuel Smart is the best in the industry in these two key areas.”  – Keith Patterson, CEO and President of Clay Oil

Solutions:

Maintain shopper convenience while securing your pumps.
Stop fuel theft today and remain convenient with Pinnacle’s LoyalPass®! Everyone knows that fuel theft increases are consistent with rising street prices, and there’s nothing worse than losing revenue at your forecourt with today’s tight fuel margins. Utilize LoyalPass to secure shopper information, giving you the control over their access while providing cash customers with the ability to authorize a dispenser before paying. You can stop fuel theft today with LoyalPass, specifically designed to address fuel drive-offs. Eliminate hot pumps but still allow your registered customers the ability to authorize a pre-pay pump for post payment.

“Our ‘Rewards in a Flash’ loyalty program using Pinnacle’s Loyalink has been the total solution. By expanding on this solution with our rewards card, we were able to implement the pump start program that enables our customers to actually start the pump before they pay. Because their reward card is tied to their driver’s license, this program has reduced our drive-offs significantly…by 50% actually. From 2006 to 2008, we saved over $700,000 by utilizing pump start and also by utilizing Pinnacle’s Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) to drill down into the data as far as drive-offs go.” – Jenny Bullard, CIO, Flash Foods

Track and report fuel theft in local store-level reports.
With Pinnacle’s Palm POS™, you can track and report drive-off events in local store level reports. Palm enables cashier entry of vehicle details when a drive off happens. Palm also offers to your DVR system, enabling you to match data to video and make it easier to find offenders. When Palm is used in combination with LoyalPass, you can control the pump start functionality and only allow known cash paying loyal customers the privilege of pumping before paying.

Pinnacle’s award winning Palm POS is the fastest, most robust touch screen point-of-sale in the market! Designed and developed specifically for the convenience petroleum industry, Palm’s touch screen interface and modular flexibility will ensure your operations are smooth and consumers get the service they demand.

Is your point-of-sale PCI compliant?  Pinnacle’s Palm POS is!

Compare calculated PPG to the actual posted PPG and easily report on fuel theft.
Pinnacle’s Retail C-Store Solutions Suite provides tools to compare the calculated PPG to the actual posted PPG, enabling you to spot not only where potential theft is occurring, but also how much discounting is actually being applied.

Easily report on drive offs – at which stores they’re occurring and how often – so that you can take immediate action.
Pinnacle’s Retail C-Store Suite provides you with an end to end suite of automation technology to manage your convenience store operations. Not just a group of bolt together products, these integrated modules provide a complete solution to address the needs demanded by today’s retail environment and provide the information you need to run the business efficiently. Seamless integration between the store level and home office, Pinnacle’s Retail C-Store Suite ensures you have timely and accurate information at the right level so you can make informed decisions with current information.

Solutions:

Reduce credit card fees by offering an alternative payment option.
Consider ACH processing, which continues to have a lower per transaction cost than any typical credit/debit card option.

Pinnacle’s LoyalDebit™ tackles the significant rise in credit card fees by adding payment capabilities to a non-payment card that the consumer already carries in their wallet, such as a loyalty card. Cost effective and able to be leveraged in combination with any of Pinnacle’s Loyalty solutions, LoyalDebit will help restore declining fuel margins and increase consumer loyalty.

“To speak to credit card fees specifically, the LoyalDebit product that the Pinnacle platform allows us to use has really impacted credit card fees. We’ve taken those customers from paying 1.7% plus 10 [to] 20 cents per transaction to a flat 15 cents per transaction, so when they use that at the dispenser, that’s really a huge fee savings on every transaction.” – Jeremie Myhren, Senior Director of IT, Road Ranger

Offer your customers a self-branded stored value card.

Self-branded stored value cards are a payment alternative that can give your customers the convenience of a cash card while limiting your costs. This self-hosted solution eliminates that standard per transaction fees other stored value hosts charge. And a self-branded card keeps your customers coming to your location to do business.

Offer your own prepaid card without having to pay the transaction fees! Pinnacle’s LoyalPay® allows you to host your own prepaid card program, you control the float and save the transaction fees that would have incurred if you outsourced.

“I see the Pinnacle Loyalty product, with its different levels- Loyalink, LoyalPay, LoyalPass and Loyal Debit ACH functions – as a real advantage in our quest to stay one-up on our competitors and I’m confident our loyalty program ‘Honey Money’ will fulfill our mission of bringing more feet to the floor so we can sell them more.” – David Murdock, Executive Vice President, Honey Farms, Inc.