Tom Buckley’s path to being the General Manager at ten site retailer Pricewatch Group isn’t a typical industry story.
Before joining Pricewatch, he was managing motor dealerships. BMW and Mercedes to be precise. One of his customers was Pricewatch themselves and they were so impressed they offered him a role with them. Tom accepted, and prepared for a big change. “I turned up at Shoreham Port and thought, ‘what have I done?!’ I knew nothing about the industry whatsoever.”
He had to hit the ground running. When he first started, Pricewatch had nine unbranded sites where they were pulling their own fuel for their own brand, ‘Power’. The war in Ukraine had not long arrived, causing some supply issues, realising they were falling to the bottom of the list to get fuel, sparking a need for change.
“If you’re not contracted to a brand and times are tough, you get what’s left. This alongside the need to update the forecourts gave us the impetus to speak to the big brands.”
Pricewatch now has one bp site, three Esso branded sites supplied by Greenergy, and three Gulf sites with another opening shortly to take their branded operation to 8. They have two other sites under the banner ‘Power’ which they continue to supply themselves.
They’ve been working on the shops too. Seven of the sites are now branded as Nisa and they’ve just opened a non-fuel site branded as Morrisons Daily.
Whilst all of the forecourt branding happened in Tom’s two years at the company, Paul Salvidge (Company Director) had already started the transition of branding the shops under the NISA brand. As the company has moved forward, Tom has got involved in projects across the board. “Now everyday is different, it’s the beauty of working for a small independent. My role is to make sure we’re open, stocked and nothing goes wrong.”
It’s not all smooth sailing though. There are challenges every fuel business needs to overcome and Pricewatch Group is no different.
“Cost of living is expensive and we are conscious of rising costs,” explains Tom. “The reality is we just try to maintain a sensible margin. We try to be as competitive as we can be, but you can’t always be the cheapest. So we focus on trying to be operationally excellent.”
They have cracked down on shop theft, staff theft and drive offs. They make sure the shops open on time. “We do anything that stops the margin disappearing in other areas because it’s already being taken away by rising costs.”
Pricewatch Group is also investing in technology to drive operational efficiency. They’ve invested in Electronic Shelf Labels (ESL) to run their shops and EdgePetrol to manage the fuel side of their business.
In a time where retailers are having to fight back against rising business costs, EdgePetrol is helping Pricewatch identify issues and stamp them out. In their first few months of usage, they found sites that hadn’t opened on time or had closed early as the staff had not arrived on time or had left for the day. If it wasn’t for EdgePetrol, they wouldn’t have seen this until a day or two later.
“It’s massive. We’re in a rural area and people are creatures of habit. If local customers who commute to work and come every day see we open late or close early for a couple of days in a row, they may go elsewhere. You don’t get many opportunities with people to get it wrong before they change the habit and we’re not in a position where we can afford to throw customers away.”
Although Tom isn’t directly responsible for setting the price on the pole sign (pricing is managed by Anthony Salvidge, a Director of Pricewatch), he knows that these decisions aren’t just down to traditional volume, margin and competition. By checking how busy the site is and viewing their tank levels in real-time, they can decide whether to try and change the speed of trade to meet delivery commitments. “If we’re giving 24-48 hours notice for a delivery, logging in once and seeing the entire situation is imperative.”
Before EdgePetrol, pricing was done on Excel spreadsheets, taking valuable time to input data which itself was delayed. They would call round the sites to order price changes and hope they were actioned correctly. EdgePetrol has meant this is a thing of the past, with price changes now tightly controlled to hit set margin targets reviewed daily and sent through the application.
“We’re more on the thumb with it instead of waiting for data to come through and trying to find time to do it. We can now price anytime from anywhere and send prices through the app, receiving confirmation when prices are changed. It’s a total game changer.”
The differences between sites are now more obvious and Pricewatch treats each as its own unique environment, allowing for full optimisation. “You might see a competitor move down but if your cost prices are going up it’s a risky move that we may have made before EdgePetrol. Having the real-time data in front of you allows for informed decision making.”
Any good business knows they need to look back to get a full picture of what is happening today. EdgePetrol’s performance reporting allows Pricewatch to look back and see the trend line over the last six months. “Sometimes you can get excited about the fact you’re having a busy week with great margins, but when you look back you realise you’re not as good as you thought you were and can adapt accordingly.”
And it’s not just Tom that benefits from EdgePetrol. “The entire team is on it.” he explains. “I always get messages from Anthony about what’s happening on site.” Managers and drivers have access too, and Pricewatch manages their log-ins to restrict access to just the data that is important to them.
Pricewatch continues to grow and improve their business operations. It’s clear EdgePetrol will be a big part of that for some time to come.
