(This article first appeared in NACS Magazine in September 2023.)
Managing fuel assets has become increasingly complex in recent years. From extreme weather to fuel theft to fuel releases, operators are continually dealing with interruptions and volatility in managing their fuel inventory and ongoing facility maintenance to stay compliant. Furthermore, fuel merchants are dealing with more stringent regulations on how and what they track and report in their fueling business, as well as increased competition and margin pressures.
“Fuel retailers are now managing and tracking more data than they ever have,” said John Huettel, chief revenue officer, Titan Cloud. “They’re at a breaking point and are looking at smarter solutions in compliance, maintenance and fuel operations to drive profits and reduce risk.”
However, traditional tools that are primarily driven by hardware providers force convenience store operators to work in data silos, which only makes their operations more complex. Different departments tend to support their operations using different systems and tools, such as spreadsheets and multiple point solutions. Most legacy systems were not designed with information sharing in mind. Each solution stores and handles data differently, making it difficult to share data sets with stakeholders from other departments or external partners.
Eliminate Silos. Unify Workflows.
While fuel management is moving toward digitalization, other retail sectors are far ahead of the fuel industry in terms of integrating digital technologies. In fact, many convenience and fuel retailers still manage critical operations on paper, spreadsheets and outdated in-house systems. This was the case for Savannah, Georgia-based Parker’s Kitchen.
“We were using multiple point solutions to manage our fuel assets,” said Josh Cohen, fuel logistics manager, Parker’s Kitchen. “The team would access inventory in one system and then need to use another system for water levels and alarm data. There was no integration or consolidated view, which made things challenging to manage.”
“What we’re seeing in the market is that businesses have data, but a lot of it is unstructured, it’s not in one place, and it is not at the level of granularity required,” said Huettel. “We solve that problem and put the data into automated workflows and processes where they can manage it day to day and manage it at scale.”
On top of needing to streamline its fuel asset management, Parker’s Kitchen is planning to double its current store footprint, adding 75 locations to its existing 75-location portfolio over the next five years. The leadership team saw that the company’s software strategy needed an upgrade.
“We needed a single platform to connect all of our fuel data including inventory, tank sizes, water levels, fuel yield, inspections and testing, alarm alerts and more—to act quickly and precisely with the real-time insights,” he said. “Titan’s software-first, hardware-agnostic approach provided us with the connectivity, operational flexibility and scale we needed, allowing us to simplify and proactively manage the dynamic needs of our fuel ecosystem.”
Parker’s Kitchen uses Titan Cloud’s suite of tools to increase productivity and profitability, as well as to reduce environmental risk and improve the workflow for its fuel assets. This has helped the retailer to automate monthly compliance reporting, avoid fines, maintain uptime at the forecourt and become far more effective in vendor and process control.
Titan Cloud’s customers also benefit from flexibility and smart analytics powered by the cloud, allowing teams to continuously track every drop of fuel inventory as it arrives at the site, enters the tank, flows through each fuel line and reaches the meter with incredible accuracy—even at the most complex, high-throughput sites.
To continue reading, check out the September issue of NACS Magazine.