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.

Thousands of convenience stores and fuel retailers nationwide rely on Pinnacle as their single-source supplier for best-in-class products and services that automate store operations and heighten business efficiency. High transaction volumes and multiple access points make fuel pumps and convenience stores particularly vulnerable to credit card fraud, yet few of these organizations have secured their networks to the level defined by the PCI Security Standards Council. A credit card breach at an unprotected site could potentially put these stores out of business with card replacement fees, mandatory on-site security audits and non-compliance penalties.

“We are dedicated to assisting our clients in selecting services and tools to not only help them meet PCI-DSS compliance standards, but are even more focused in helping them remain compliant.” said Drew Mize, VP Product Management and Marketing at Pinnacle. “Finding additional partners that can bring convenience retail and petroleum industry experience into our clients’ organizations helps us meet this goal. The experience and knowledge that VendorSafe will deliver adds to the options that we are able to provide our clients and we look forward to the partnership.”

“With Vendor Safe’s Global Security Mesh™/ VPN, Pinnacle clients can secure sensitive credit card data while taking advantage of the included VPN (Virtual Private Network); these VPN capabilities will provide secure remote access to multi-site operators for real time reporting and other enterprise applications all for an affordable, fixed monthly fee,” said Bill Pickard, COO of Vendor Safe Technologies. “Our out-of-the-box, IT-friendly solution offers rapid installation, and requires no IP changes to LAN (Local Area Network) devices or to the WAN (Wide Area Network) – all without an onsite technician. We are delighted to partner with Pinnacle to simplify the complex process of PCI compliance for their clients while safeguarding them financially against data breach with our $50,000 TrustVault™ Certificate.”

The Vendor Safe PCI Managed Security Suite™ addresses the three critical exposure areas of PCI compliance:

• Network Security, including firewall configuration, remote access, port limitation, public and private network segregation, zoning within the LAN, and encryption of card holder data;
• Data Access, including external file transfer, wireless access elements, and local and remote monitoring; and
• Policies & Procedures, including security policies, firewall setup and incident management.

For more information on any Pinnacle products or services, e-mailtpcsolutions@ec2-3-137-192-69.us-east-2.compute.amazonaws.com, call 1-800-366-1173, or visit the Pinnacle web site at www.pinncorp.com.

About Pinnacle

The Pinnacle Corporation (www.pinncorp.com) is the leader in the automation technology industry focusing on the rapidly evolving convenience store and petroleum industries. Pinnacle delivers products that automate the broad spectrum of convenience store operations and supply chain management of fuel operations. Nationwide, Pinnacle’s products and services are used daily in thousands of convenience outlets to automate and improve their store operations and by fuel marketers to increase their efficiency in the complex management of fuel delivery.

Pinnacle is committed to solving key industry issues that make the greatest impact on an organization’s success. Let us show you how our PA-DSS Compliant Palm POS and our Store and Home Office solutions can offer you streamlined efficiency and the data that matters, on time, every day. Our products include EPM Business Intelligence Suite and Enterprise Loyalty Suite. Make your business more profitable and efficient using the latest technology from a proven provider. Your choice is simple, pick Pinnacle!

About Vendor Safe Technologies

For more than 20 years, Vendor Safe Technologies has developed, deployed, and supported innovative security technologies. The company’s patent-pending Self Configuring Firewall Architecture™ and Global Security Mesh™/VPN enables PCI Level 2, 3 and 4 merchants to become PCI compliant within 30 days at the lowest total cost of deployment and lowest total cost of ownership. Vendor Safe solutions are secured by the superior defenses of firewalls from Juniper Networks. Learn more by visiting the Vendor Safe website at www.vendorsafe.com.

Contact Information:

Tracie Wilbanks
The Pinnacle Corporation
817-795-5555, extension 293

As Master of Ceremonies for Pinnacle Summit 2009, I was extremely pleased with this year’s event, from the educational track sessions, to the dynamic General Session speakers and the outstanding networking opportunities. As an Executive of Honey Farms, Inc., a chain of 35 convenience stores, I oversee the day-to-day operations of our business and I know first-hand the value that Pinnacle’s annual Client Summit has brought to me and the Honey Farm’s organization.I would like to thank those of you that attended Pinnacle Summit 2009. There will be no more challenging time in our market than right now and we all know that we have to become more efficient to maintain successful businesses. Pinnacle Summit provides an avenue to attain these goals and to see how others in our industry attain these goals through Pinnacle’s software.

We all attend the Pinnacle Summit to discover new ways to increase our bottom line. Not only is it a great time to learn about recent developments that Pinnacle has completed and what’s upcoming, but more importantly it’s a great time to learn how to use existing solutions more efficiently. A time to network with peers, Pinnacle staff, and partners to discover opportunities for improvement. Here are some of the keys things I took away this year:

• Benefits of electronic signature capture
• Savings associated with scan based trading
• How to implement a loyalty program
• Loyalty is not just about discounts
• Instrumental tips for PCI compliance
• How to reduce my credit card fees
• The importance of good business intelligence software
• Benefits of Smart Buy™

If you were unable to make it to Pinnacle Summit 2009, I’d highly recommend you consider attending next year in New Orleans to take advantage of these overwhelming benefits.

 

By: David Murdock, Executive Vice President, Honey Farms, Inc.

The “new normal” is well on its way to becoming one of the catch phrases that we’re all going to get sick of. It’s in headlines everywhere, especially as pundits and consultants try to figure out ways to market their services around a phrase that has more alliteration than meaning. The essential question is this: when the recession ends, will consumers persist in the changed behavior patterns – a kind of new frugality – that an economic downturn has prompted? The simplest answer is this: Who knows?It is dangerous to think about the American consumer as part of a homogeneous group with predictive behavior. Really, really dangerous.I’m not at all sure that people today are going to carry the scars of recession in the same way that so many of our parents could be described as “Depression babies.” Some will, some won’t. At MorningNewsBeat, I’ve gotten more than few emails from people who offer some variation on the sentence, “I can’t wait to be rich again.” Those folks, I’m guessing, have short memories.We also have no idea how the younger generation of consumers – you know, the ones who don’t remember a world without Google and Amazon and iPods, and whose behavior reflects easy access to information and a sense of entitlement to a life that lives up to their expectations and ideals –will react to the economic tumult they see around them. So we cannot predict their behavior. There simply is no blueprint from which to draw judgments. But rather than obsess about the permanence of recession scars, retailers (and their product and service providers) ought to remain cognizant of all the various influences that have the ability to change shopper behavior. Let me offer a quick take on four of them:

1. Nutrition Issues.As more and more regulations make it into the books in this area, and we deal with a federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that is both more empowered and active than it has been in years, retailers are going to have to work their way through a minefield of laws and consumer preferences. Already there is some backlash, and debate about the role of the “nanny state.” For me, I think it is all about making a plethora of choices available to shoppers – and sufficient information with which to make intelligent choices. One example: I love the laws that require chain restaurants to post calorie counts for all their menu items. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been tempted to buy something that I seem to have developed a craving for, and have changed my mind when I saw the calorie count. I know that isn’t necessarily good for short-term sales numbers, but keeping me alive longer actually is good for business. Besides, it’ll get stores to offer more nutritious options, which could be good for business.

2. Food Safety.This is an area to which everyone in the food chain needs to pay close attention, because consumer trust is eroding slowly but surely with every headline about this recall or that contamination. The worst of it was when we discovered that Peanut Corp. of America had been shipping contaminated product with what appears to be full knowledge of the contamination – the first time in my memory that a manufacturer was accused of deliberate negligence. No matter how active the FDA becomes, this is going to continue to be a big and developing story, and almost nothing about it is good for the food business. Which is why I think the industry needs to adopt – and embrace – a philosophy of total transparency. Follow the example of the Greek olive oil company that makes it possible for consumers to type in a code number on the back of every bottle and see where the olives were harvested and pretty much every scintilla of information you could possibly need to know about it. This is the future…you might as well go there.

3. Private Label Growth.Lots of discussion about this segment, mostly because the economic downturn has sparked a lot of shopper interest – in the US, we’re seeing private brand distribution that looks more like Europe. This may or may not continue when prosperity returns – but that’s up to retailers and their private brand providers. If the quality is good and the store markets these products as part of a broader store brand strategy, then they will continue to grow along with the higher margins that they bring. Take them for granted, and things will go back to the way things were.

4. Generational Differences.I referred above to an entire generation that does not remember a world without Google and Amazon and iPods. Understanding how this generation thinks and feels, and what its rules of acquisition are, is critically important for companies mapping out a long term strategy for growth and relevance. Think about your own kids…and start asking them questions about what they want out of the retailing experience. I actually think it is pretty simple. They want what they want, when they want it, where they want it, how they want it, at a price that they think is appropriate.

Conclusion…Figure out that formula, and the future is in the palm of your hands. This is the “new normal” that retailers and manufacturers need to be planning for.By: Kevin Coupe, “The Content Guy”, MorningNewsBeat.com