Fuel and forecourt insight specialist Informed Sources has launched an app that alerts petrol station owners within five minutes if local competitors change their prices.
PriceWatch Mobile, which also allows users to update their own price changes direct with Fuel Finder and has been in use in Australia for five years, has the potential to save operators with 10 sites or more hours of time reaearching rivals prices every day, says head of business development Mark Hawtin.
“Perhaps the most important thing is that it is giving you almost real-time visibility of what’s happening in your local markets, and whether you should respond or not,” Hawtin said at the UK launch of the app at an On The Road with Forecourt Trader event, hosted by Highland Group, on September 24.
“It dramatically reduces admin for those in charge of pricing,” added Hawtin. “One [Australian] client who runs 10 sites today reckons it’s saving him between two and three hours a day, because he doesn’t have to go searching around trying to find what the latest competitors’ pricing is, and then determining if that is material to him,” before updating the government scheme. “All of that admin burden has been pretty much eliminated for him.”
PriceWatch Mobile will cost around £1 per site, per day, and be available to multiple users at participating forecourts. While Informed Sources will not take liability for any problems with reporting that could be picked up by VE3 Global, the operator of Fuel Finder scheme which is authorised to report problems to the Competition and Markets Authority, it says that it will keep a due diligence paper chain for operators.
Hawtin added that Informed Sources will alert retailers if it has not received a positive verification for their updated price with Fuel Finder, however. “And we keep the records as well, so if you then get into trouble with VE3 Global and they put the blame on you, we can show that you did the right job and that you did actually update the prices and it’s an issue on their end and not on your own,” he says.
