Our round-up of the Kalibrate Fuel and Retail Innovation Summit 2021

For three weeks in May 2021, we ran a series of virtual conference sessions to help our customers gain market insight and share best practices. We also introduced the newest additions to the Kalibrate Group.

We were delighted that more than 330 customers joined us during the summit – making it an even bigger success than last year’s event.

The summit aimed to address the biggest challenges and opportunities in our markets today, with sessions covering topics as diverse as the electric vehicle revolution, fuel price optimization, location analytics, and the link between real estate and marketing teams.

Collaboration across the Kalibrate Group

For us, this was an important event; our first customer summit since our acquisition of Intalytics, and investment into eSite Analytics. During the summit, we welcomed customers from across Kalibrate Canada (previously Kent Group Ltd), Trade Area Systems (TAS), Intalytics, and eSite, and heard from colleagues within those businesses.

A number of sessions were devised and presented collaboratively with representatives pooling expertise to deliver quality content to attendees, while explaining how our solutions work together for the benefit of customers.

Popular sessions included “The evolving role of stores in an omnichannel strategy” presented by Pete Bacigalupo at eSite and Bill McKeogh at Intalytics, and the “The location analytics journey” delivered by TAS’ Dustin Stancil, Intalytics’ Matt Montgomery, and eSite’s Charles Wetzel.

Launching our electric vehicle solution: How can we assess the EV opportunity?

Our EV sessions were among the most well-attended of the summit, with three sessions presented by Anila Siraj, our Head of Data Strategy and EV lead.

We started by reviewing the state of the EV market with insight from our Electric Opportunity report. Covering ten countries, the report looks at rates of EV adoption, charging behavior, and how businesses are responding to demand.

The second EV session looked at charger placement strategies using Kalibrate’s solution to identify the optimal sites within a network to place EV facilities. The session featured a demonstration of our solution and sparked much conversation with customers about applications in their markets around the world.

The final EV session addressed the demographic profile of the EV consumer. We looked at EV driver segmentation, the journeys they take, and how retailers can create a compelling offer to attract EV consumers.

“EV is moving very fast and has tons of opportunities.” – Customer feedback

Fuel price optimization: How can we get the right price at the right time?

Our fuel price optimization sessions took a deep dive into new functionality in Kalibrate Pricing, and how it can help customers select the right price at the right time, more efficiently. Starting with potential applications and moving into data science, the optimization sessions took customers through real world examples and the Kalibrate intelligence that backs it all up.

“Optimization is Kalibrate’s shining light, so I would absolutely advise customers to be taking advantage of our functionality. We have a strong competency in data driven decisions and implementing optimization. Both in terms of accessing the product functionality and our client services team, I encourage customers to extract as much value as they can from our relationship.” – Tom Hatton, Head of Product Management, Fuel Pricing.

Launching Kalibrate Market Intelligence (KMI) in the US

Delivered by Jason Parent, Head of Insight Products, this session provided detail on the US launch of Kalibrate Market Intelligence. The session began with a look at the challenges that fuel retailers face when analyzing their performance — and how removing the blindfold to look at relative market performance can unlock insights to support better decision making. After an overview of the roadmap and key milestones, viewers tuned into a live demo to learn how to use granular competitor data to their advantage.

Best practice: How can you get more from your Kalibrate tools?

As part of our commitment to empower our customers to make better decisions, we delivered a range of best practice sessions across our solutions. This stream included two events devoted to getting more from Kalibrate Pricing (part one and part two). We also ran a Kalibrate Planning version covering the latest platform updates, and a well-received best practice in fuel market planning session. On the location intelligence front, we covered bulk analytics in TAS, plus guidance on how to enhance your use of retail forecasting tools.

“My biggest takeaway is that excellent data analysis could not make up for poor-quality data. Also, being adaptable to change and being innovative are the keys to thrive in this ever-changing world.” – Customer feedback

Our customers getting involved

We were delighted to have lots of engagement from our customers during the summit, not just from asking questions and participating in polls as attendees, but also as contributors to the conversation.

We hosted two panel events covering the fuel and retail spaces, and heard first-hand from our customers on their assessment of the opportunities ahead. With a diverse client base across verticals and geographies, and at various stages of market maturity, the insight we received from customers was invaluable. It was no surprise that our panel discussions among the best-attended events of the conference.

“[My biggest takeaway] was the importance of shared learning, understanding what market changes may be happening, and that different markets are at different stages in that change.” – Customer feedback

A final thank you

This covered just some of the sessions at this year’s conference, which spanned 35 events across the three weeks. We look forward to next year’s summit – we hope we’ll be delivering the sessions in person.

“We’d like to thank everyone who joined us, asked a question, participated in the polls, or spoke as a contributor. The interaction during, and positive feedback after, is exactly why we ran the Kalibrate Summit.” – Oliver Shaw, CEO, Kalibrate