The world of forecourts has evolved significantly over recent years. No longer are they simply a place to ‘fill up and go’; instead, they are developing into destinations offering an all-around shopping, entertainment, and culinary experience. With longer dwell times becoming the norm in the wake of EV (Electric Vehicles) charging, customers now expect a broad range of quality products from brands they know and love and a pleasant and inviting environment.
Forecourt retailers need to ensure that they are creating an unrivalled customer experience – whether that be through their fuel selection, food and beverage offerings, non-fuel retail, customer service, and so on. In a competitive landscape, it is important that forecourts can still hold their own against the competition by leveraging value in revenue increase, reducing costs, and reducing capex.
Data as a differentiator in the changing nature of the forecourt
Data can play a key role in achieving this value for retailers. The challenge for the retailers is that the forecourt is a hub for the data, but capturing the insight and making decisions is constrained. By using data to generate excessive insights, they drown their retail operations in it.
In recent years, the oil and gas Industry has actively embraced deeper analytics, artificial intelligence (AI), and the Internet of things (IoT) to drive operational effectiveness in asset management, while forecourt retailers continue to lag with gaps in capabilities and infrastructure. Making sense of near-real-time customer data, intelligent mathematical models, IoT, artificial intelligence, and machine learning techniques can help retailers offer highly personalized and relevant recommendations to each shopper.
Big box convenience retailers have realized that they must adapt their retail store digital transformation layout and range to capture new shopper missions as they emerge. And the same is true for local convenience retailers. Dynamic, data-driven space optimization capabilities will be a critical component in the convenience retail technology stack. They provide an even more personalized experience by harnessing the growing penetration of mobile apps.
These pave the way for a new generation of offering capabilities that use geo-location and proximity identification to deliver the right communication to the right person at the right time. Shifts in demand, basket size, customer requirements, and complementary offers have driven a fundamental change in service. It is now vitally important that retailers use and manage space and range as effectively as possible across their stores. Today’s stores are strategic mobility hubs: a set of leverageable assets. Retailers must focus not only on delivering the right range in the right space but also on managing the change required to address shopper needs on a more fluid basis.
Where data is really generated at forecourts: a view of the customer and business
The convenience retail offering is evolving towards food (particularly fresh food), where supply chain and digital expertise are critically important. As in big-box retail, the increased adoption of data-driven retail technology will fuel success. Very few winning businesses have yet to incorporate full data instrumentation across their operations. Once integrated, the signals provide insight into changing consumer behaviors. It allows them to evolve and enhance the customer proposition while continuously monitoring and driving profitability at the operational level.
Dynamic, data-driven space optimization capabilities and fulfilment platforms will be critical components in the convenience retail technology stack. Retailers must focus not only on delivering the right range in the right space but also on managing the change required to address shopper needs on a more fluid basis. Retailers will make up the network of organizations that facilitate the processes regarding the capture, transmission, storage, analysis, and sharing of information that enable forecourt retail data monetization.
Data value journey levellers for fuel retail
Steps to follow for the data driven forecourt of the future
- Visibility across the fuel retail value chain – leveraging the technology platform to build the centralized view of business and operations.
- Customer centricity – customer engagement is key to building value-driven offers for the customers.
- Exploring and exploiting technology – AI-based modules and cloud platforms will help retailers collect and store millions of transactions of data.
- Enabling data-driven culture- building a data-savvy workforce with upskilling and re-skilling
- New business model- unlocking data as a competitive asset and honing digital capabilities in the new business model
