Delivering the Kalibrate Standard: Riley Buchanan

In this blog series, we take a closer look at how our team supports our clients in achieving their strategic objectives. In some organizations, it might be going ‘above and beyond’ to get the job done – but we just call it ‘the Kalibrate Standard’.

This edition features Riley Buchanan, Senior Key Account Executive.

Tell us a little about your role.

You might say my role is bringing the client and Kalibrate together to help the client enhance performance and grow. Kalibrate has made significant investment in having people who know the industry and have a history with it. We’ve been providing solutions for fuel and convenience retailers for over 50 years — and I’ve been a part of that here at Kalibrate for 18 years.

Being able to really understand the nuances of a client’s need or challenge and aligning it to the Kalibrate solution or service that can help, is important. Knowing the industry is valuable to the client as understanding the context of the problem is very important.

One size does not fit all and we want to make sure we apply the right solution to provide the most benefit to the client.

How does your role interact with the rest of the team?

I act as a connector between our clients and the Kalibrate team, ensuring that we align our expertise and solutions with their specific needs. Because I have a deep understanding of the fuel and convenience industry, I can effectively communicate client challenges and objectives to our internal teams — whether that’s Customer Success, Product, or Consulting. This helps ensure that our solutions not only fit the client’s business but also evolve to meet changing industry demands.

Collaboration is key to success, and I work closely with different teams to drive that. By sharing feedback from the field, I help Kalibrate refine and enhance our offerings, making sure we continue to provide high-impact solutions that drive client growth.

Ultimately, my role is about fostering strong relationships — both with clients and within Kalibrate — so that every engagement leads to meaningful, long-term success.

What types of problems are the clients you work with trying to solve?

The clients I work with are focused on improving efficiency and making smarter, data-driven decisions. Whether it’s improving retail fuel pricing decisions (rules, optimization, how to get to auto-implementation, integration with point of sale) or understanding why the unique site characteristics of a location (traffic, brand, ingress/egress, pump design, cooler doors, etc.) have an impact on a site’s performance — they want to maximize the value of Kalibrate’s insight to ultimately improve their performance.

Beyond operational efficiency, many clients are also navigating industry shifts, including continuous retail price and margin volatility, the conversion to EV, the requirement to up the game in foodservice and, of course, mergers and acquisitions.

You don’t have to be a Circle K to play in the M&A game. Many solid operators like Refuel, Majors Management or more recently Nouria (acquiring EnMarket) have shown the ability and desire to grow through acquisition. Of course, they have good vision, people and systems setting a foundation for growth.

Give us an example of a particularly challenging client question.

I recently had a client that used Kalibrate Fuel Pricing, had fully implemented the system and was using it well. During one of our regular review meetings they mentioned that they wanted to drive more margin without giving up much (or any) volume, and if there was a way we could help with that. Typically, volume and margin is a balancing act and to make one go up the other goes down, but this client was looking into their system insights to see if the data could identify subtle opportunities that could help them.

And how did you solve that?

Many things like the cost of fuel affect margin, but you can’t really control that. Your site offering, your price and the competitive landscape will affect volume. So, what do we do?

I got the Customer Success Manager involved and, as a team, we tackled the question from different angles and created some solid suggestions that paid dividends.

We started with a full review of how the client currently prices. They had good practices but we found they could respond to market changes even quicker by auto-implementing more pricing where feasible. As Kalibrate Pricing is designed to process data quickly, identifying additional candidate sites to auto implement can support optimal pricing. There is an old saying that a good price executed quickly is better than the “perfect” price executed belatedly. In this industry, time is money.

We provided them with mobility data to help quantify the challenges they were facing in their lowest performing sites. They were very surprised by some of the insights the data provided, highlighting those better positioned sites along their customers travel route. This insight led to a few strategy changes within Kalibrate Fuel Pricing that improved the client’s results at those sites.

So the client now has a more informed price – and better execution.

Finally, we reviewed their price optimization (AI) metrics, in line with appropriate price constraints, which revealed sites where the price/volume relationship was such that a slight change in strategy would result in a better overall result.

I think it’s fair to say Kalibrate’s clients see us as a partner in their performance. We have so many resources at their disposal — both people and technology — not only in retail fuel pricing, but in choosing the best sites for NTI growth and optimizing a network of sites to maximize overall site performance. Helping clients get maximum benefit from Kalibrate is something our entire organization takes pride in.

What’s the most rewarding part of your role?

The most rewarding part of my role is seeing the direct impact Kalibrate’s solutions have on our clients’ success. Whether it’s helping a retailer optimize their fuel pricing strategy, guiding them to the best location for expansion, or ensuring they get the most out of their investment, it’s fulfilling to know that our expertise translates into real, measurable growth for their business.

Building long-term relationships is a massively rewarding part of my role. It starts before they even become a client — understanding their challenges, recommending the right solutions, and staying engaged to ensure they achieve the outcomes they expect.

The fuel and convenience industry is constantly adapting — whether to economic changes, shifting consumer behaviors, or advancements like AI and EV adoption. Being in a position to help our clients not just react to these changes, but proactively leverage them for success, makes my role both exciting and meaningful.

You can connect with Riley at Riley.Buchanan@Kalibrate.com or here on LinkedIn