KSS Inc. has become a member of the Petroleum Convenience Alliance for Technology Standards (PCATS).
Bob Stein, president and chief executive officer of KSS, says that joining PCATS is necessary to ensure a simplified, plug-in-play integration between KSS’ pricing systems and most point-of-sale (POS) and back-office platforms.
“There is a lot of industry interest for a shift towards top-to-bottom, fully integrated solutions that allow fuel pricing to be positioned at any level of an organization. The PCATS standards will set the stage for this to become reality,” he said. “Collaborating efforts with PCATS members and our retail fuel pricing application, PriceNet, will provide off-the-shelf integration with a variety of retail technology systems.”
PCATS, founded in September 2003, continues the development of standards work initiated under the NACS Technology Standards Project. PCATS’ mission is to develop, maintain and assist members in the implementation of a variety of technology standards. CSD is among the more than 150 PCATS members that represent more than 22,000 c-stores. Membership is open to any petroleum marketer, convenience store owner/operator, other retail channels, or any of their suppliers or vendors.
Stein said the membership will also benefit users of KSS’ new KSS Analytics business intelligence (BI) solution by seamlessly integrating the analytics workbench with other store systems to provide real-time fuel operations analysis.
“We’re excited to have KSS as a new member,” said Gabriel Olives vice president of IT/Petroleum of Turkey Hill Minit Markets and PCATS Chairman of the Board. “Their expertise in fuel pricing technology and analytics will help us further shape the standards that we are developing as we continue to pursue technological excellence throughout the industry.”
PriceNet is KSS’ pricing solution that supports key tasks and stakeholders involved in retail fuels pricing – from capturing field-based intelligence at the site level, to the generation of price proposals via comprehensive pricing rules or price optimization, to consistent and timely implementation. High levels of automation and an ‘exception-based’ approach ensure a rapid response to competitors and market conditions, thus allowing pricing analysts to leverage the power of pricing analytics.
