Cumberland Farms: Pointing the way to even better
The reason we're a leader is because we're never satisfied that we've seen all the angles. We keep asking what we could be better, and Kalibrate's 7E Assessment gave us some fresh perspectives. If there's something that will help us to widen the gap between Cumberland Farms and the next competitors, we want to know about it.
About Cumberland Farms
Cumberland Farms — “a brand new 75 year old company” — has aggressively evolved from its traditional fuel-focused roots to become the leading fuel and convenience retailer in the Northeast. The company is now expanding geographically down the East Coast, rolling out a spacious, contemporary store format, and offering new Cumberland Farms-branded product lines on the forecourt and in the store. What could Kalibrate tell this savvy organization that it didn’t already know?
The challenge
Kalibrate’s 7 Elements structure fuel and retail performance analysis around elements that, taken as a whole, afford a holistic view into the business. The elements are price, location, market, merchandising, facilities, operations, and brand.
Cumberland Farms management was looking for insight into questions that many retailers face, such as:
- Is there demand that we’re missing on the forecourt and in the store?
- Our new store format is doing well — but could it do better?
- Is our pricing system optimizing volume and margin?
- Is there opportunity to get closer to our consumer though our mobile payments and loyalty programs?
- Is our customer experience as consistent and compelling as it can be?
- Where can we grow brand value and create competitive differentiation?
What are the results?
The market-by-market 7E Assessment offered insights, recommendations, and an execution roadmap. It gave Cumberland Farms management a consistent way to view all parts of the business, from merchandise to customer service, parking to pricing, and question the impact each part has on the others.
A key management challenge we see with fuel retailers today is understanding the connections between the different parts of the business — fuel, merchandise, customer service, brand impact, choice of location — every part of the business is working with different sets of data and different metrics. Executives often don’t even realize that the lack of a common understanding can hurt them. 7E is the common ground that gives management a way to see and align impacts among business units for the best customer experience. We call it Total Site Visibility for Total Site Profitability.
Anila Siraj, Kalibrate’s Chief Product Officer
