Meet Simon, Kalibrate's VP of International Sales

Meet Simon Martin:

What does a typical working day look like for you?

My responsibility is for our global commercial team, who focus on the fuel, mobility and convenience retail channels.

My typical day tends to be a mixture of activities. I travel quite a lot visiting clients and prospects, and attending industry events. When I’m working from home or at the office, I spend time on Kalibrate’s strategic planning initiatives to ensure that the direction of our solutions and the focus of our products is always relevant in solving the challenges that our clients and prospects are facing in the industry.

What are the biggest challenges and opportunities for gas and convenience retailers?

Fuel and convenience is undergoing quite a lot of change. That presents a lot of challenges, but also opportunities for fuel and convenience players. I think one of the biggest challenges at the moment is around the energy transition.

It’s probably the largest question mark in the industry overall at the moment, but there are a lot of businesses in mature markets that are focusing on their non-fuel retail offer as a result.

I think also there’s a plenty of opportunity in developing economies where there’s still a tremendous amount of growth available within the fuels business. I think fuels businesses will continue to thrive and grow in most developing economies as a result of population growth and social and economic upturn of burgeoning middle class will continue to allow demand for petrol and diesel to prosper in certain markets.

And I think in all scenarios, the best fuel, mobility and convenience retailers will focus on continually seeking to understand their customer, and their potential customers in order to realize sustainable growth for the future.

Talking about the future, there are probably some events that I can see unfolding. We do continue to expect to see consolidation in many markets. around the world. I would anticipate major oil companies continuing to divest in certain markets which are not aligned with their global strategic vision or are perhaps not profitable for them anymore.

Alternative energies will continue to be a theme — in particular EV, which is still the front runner in private vehicle mobility.  Fuel mobility and convenience retailers already have strong locations and good value propositions and I think they are likely to outperform charge point operators who have the infrastructure development going on but they have very few additional propositions to maintain viable customer levels. 

Change is the only constant.

Fuel, mobility, and convenience retailers will continue to need new solutions — and the right solution providers, technology and analytical capability — to guide decision making in the fundamentals of their business.