Improved processes and higher margins for Romanian fuel retailer

Rompetrol are a renowned international player in the European fuel retail market. With the largest refinery in Romania, and fuel retail and franchise operations across four countries, they have a successful growth story and ambitious plans for the future.

In the past five years they’ve added an additional 30 sites to their Romanian fuel retail network, bringing their site count to over 180, and  increased their market share by 4%.

Rompetrol has used Kalibrate’s fuel pricing tools since 2007. Initially starting with PriceNet before transitioning to Kalibrate Fuel Pricing.

The challenge

Cristian Lungu, B2B Sales Optimization Manager, is in charge of Rompetrol’s  pricing division for the fuel retail network and wholesale depots. He has a strong focus on optimization and continual improvement throughout his department. Cristian tells us about the initial decision to adopt Kalibrate;

Rompetrol were one of the first players in the market using this pricing tool, so we took a very measured approach to our decision making. We organized a pilot of 30 sites to test the impact that Kalibrate would have.

There were significant enhancements in terms of margins and control over pricing at each station. The process was so obviously improved that we adopted PriceNet for our entire Romanian network, with additional licences that would cover us for our long-term expansion plans.

Right from the beginning, Kalibrate proved itself to be an invaluable tool.”

We’ve been using Kalibrate’s pricing tools for so long it’s now ingrained in our business and shapes our daily practices.

Recently, we’ve upgraded onto the latest Kalibrate Fuel Pricing software which is allowing us to review our approach to pricing and consider which sites are suitable for a more complex pricing strategy. We’re moving away from a fairly simple, fixed price position to an optimized pricing strategy — which will make sure we’re using all elements of the system to help us achieve a margin uplift.

Transitioning onto a new software platform was made far easier by the Kalibrate team who had such patience and went above and beyond to overcome any roadblocks we were faced with. The Kalibrate team is like an extension of our Pricing team, offering continuous counselling, recommendations, and overall support throughout our entire pricing process.

We were already really satisfied with our pricing tool, but the latest version of Kalibrate Fuel Pricing has exceeded our expectations.

We now have even more control. It’s easy to view settings for each of our sites, to see which pricing validation rule is being applied, and to test where one rule is winning over another. It’s fast, easy to use, and has helped us to improve our processes even further.”

Rompetrol are preparing to implement fuel price optimization using Kalibrate’s patented AI.

We haven’t always been an open-minded organization, but Kalibrate has improved outcomes across our network, and we feel that now is the right time to utilize all areas of the software and implement machine learning into our pricing processes.

I’ve worked with the Kalibrate team to understand how optimization works in the system. In the past, we’ve tried to mirror this approach manually with some specific sites, but Kalibrate’s optimization tool will enable us to be far more efficient and better test the outcomes.

I’m working to identify a group of 20-30 fuel stations that I think will be ideal for optimization and am hoping to achieve a margin uplift without losing significant volume. I am confident that it will help achieve higher margins for between 5-10% of Rompetrol’s Romanian network.”