Taiga Data Selected by PDI Technologies as a Premier Front Office Reporting Platform

**CINCINNATI, OHIO, August 14, 2024** Taiga Data, a leading Front Office Reporting Platform in the convenience retail industry, and PDI Technologies, a global leader in the convenience retail and petroleum wholesale ecosystem, are excited to announce a strategic collaboration positioning Taiga Data as a preferred solution. This collaboration is designed to benefit both new and existing PDI customers.

Taiga’s Front Office Reporting Platform integrates in real time with PDI Enterprise ERP solutions that are used to operate convenience stores. Using this technology, PDI customers can leverage consolidated, real-time, mobile-first reporting to drive revenue, improve margins, and enhance customer experiences.

“We are thrilled to formalize our collaboration with PDI after successfully working together with several shared customers,” said Bill Ivers, CEO of Taiga Data. “Our combined efforts have greatly improved product integration and collaboration, resulting in numerous industry-leading innovations for our users now and in the future.”

“The Taiga team has built a robust platform designed specifically to automate and deliver the reporting needs of convenience retailers, so it’s no surprise that we already share a number of customers who have integrated our technologies,” said Drew Mize, Executive Vice President and General Manager, North America Enterprise Productivity, at PDI Technologies. “We look forward to expanding our reach to help more customers improve operational efficiencies, drive revenue, and boost profits with Taiga’s powerful reporting platform.”

Taiga is a proud sponsor of PDI Connections Live 2024, in Washington, DC, from August 25 to 28, 2024. Register for the Connections Live in-person networking and education experience here. In September, Taiga and PDI will co-host a live webinar that is free to attend; watch for registration details to come. To learn more about how your business can benefit from this collaboration, contact Morgan Pemble at Taiga Data (Morgan.Pemble@taigadata.com).

About Taiga Data

Taiga Data provides the Convenience Retail industry’s leading Front Office Platform, designed to unlock the power of retailers’ data and drive business results. Taiga’s Front Office Platform enables real-time data aggregation, customizable dashboards, and AI-driven analysis, allowing retailers to optimize their operations, enhance category management, and improve customer experiences. By automating manual processes and integrating seamlessly with existing systems, Taiga empowers businesses to leverage actionable insights, ensuring efficiency and growth in a highly competitive market. Visit the Taiga Data website for more information.

About PDI Technologies

With 40 years of industry leadership, PDI Technologies, Inc. resides at the intersection of productivity and sales growth, delivering powerful solutions that serve as the backbone of the convenience retail and petroleum wholesale ecosystem. By “Connecting Convenience” across the globe, we empower businesses to increase productivity, make informed decisions, and engage faster with their customers. From large-scale ERP and logistics operations to loyalty programs and cybersecurity, we’re simplifying the industry supply chain for whatever comes next. Today, we serve over 200,000 locations worldwide with solutions like the Fuel Rewards® program and GasBuddy®, two popular brands representing more than 30 million users. Visit the PDI Technologies website.

Media Contact

Morgan Pemble

Taiga Data

morgan.pemble@taigadata.com

www.taigadata.com

 
Hear from our Clients
"Taiga's Front Office Platform is the perfect complement to PDI Enterprise. I am truly excited about their growing collaboration and the new products they have under development."

It’s Budget Season: 5 Essential Questions to Ask Your Data Partner

As budget season approaches, it’s crucial to make informed decisions about your technology investments. Data analytics are vital for gaining insights and enhancing operations, so asking the right questions when choosing a data partner is essential. 

“Taiga came through on integration and implementation with flying colors. Within a week or two, we were pulling live data from our POS, and then within another week or two we were pulling historical data to be translated into our dashboard for analyzing. 

– Alan Meyer, CEO, Mach 1 Stores

Here are the top five questions to guide your decision:

1. How do you integrate with multiple data sources?

Why It Matters: Fragmented data can hinder reporting. Look for a partner that integrates seamlessly with your existing systems to provide a 360-degree view of operations, minimize data silos, and deliver immediate ROI.

How quickly do store transactions appear in accessible reports?

Why It Matters: Delays in addressing issues can be costly. Ensure the solution offers real-time data integration to detect and resolve problems swiftly, minimizing potential costs.

What systems does your solution integrate with?

Why It Matters: Out-of-the-box integrations with your tech stack mean no extra development fees and instant data availability. Choose a partner whose solution integrates with your existing and future technology systems, speeding up implementation and reducing costs.

What ongoing support and training do you offer?

Why It Matters: Continuous support and training are essential for maximizing tool usage and enhancing ROI. A partner committed to your success will help your team adopt advanced capabilities over time.

Can you share examples of successful client collaborations?

Why It Matters: Case studies and references build confidence in a vendor’s expertise. Real-world examples show how they’ve helped other businesses succeed, giving you confidence in their ability to deliver results.

Prioritize these questions to select the right partner and ensure your data analytics investment drives meaningful results.

Hear from our Clients

Category Management

“A lot of items (novelty especially) can be HOT today and you can’t give them away tomorrow. Its great to be able to see real time if sales are slowing so you can pivot your orders”
Alan Meyer
CEO - Mach 1 Stores

5 Common Category Management Mistakes to Avoid

Effective category management is key to convenience retail success. It optimizes inventory, boosts profits, and enhances customer satisfaction. However, many retailers fall into common pitfalls that can hinder performance. Here are five mistakes to avoid and how Taiga’s Category Management feature can help you navigate these challenges seamlessly.

1. Not Adhering to NACS Standard of Categorization

Impact: Inconsistent categorization complicates data management, hindering the ability to make accurate comparisons across stores. This can affect vendor negotiations, inventory management, and competitive analysis.

Solution: Taiga ensures that your products adhere to NACS standards, facilitating informed vendor negotiations, reducing out-of-stocks, and enabling agile marketing strategies. Our platform manages the heavy lifting of cleaning and cataloging your data, ensuring consistency and reliability.

2. Ignoring Data-Driven Insights

Impact: Relying on intuition or outdated data can lead to poor product assortments and missed opportunities.

Solution: Taiga’s real-time analytics provide insights from categories to individual SKUs, ensuring your product assortments meet customer demand and drive sales.

3. Overlooking SKU Performance

Impact: Neglecting individual SKU performance wastes valuable shelf space.

Solution: Taiga helps monitor SKU-level performance, optimizing space allocation and focusing on high-performing products.

4. Poor Space Allocation

Impact: Inefficient space use reduces sales and profitability.

Solution: Taiga’s platform provides growth and drain data for each SKU, ensuring effective shelf space utilization to maximize sales.

5. Failing to Adapt to Market Trends

Impact: Slow adaptation to changing consumer preferences leads to lost sales and dissatisfaction.

Solution: Taiga offers insights into market trends, helping retailers align their product assortments with current consumer preferences.

Avoiding these mistakes can significantly enhance your retail operations. Taiga’s category management feature empowers you with the data-driven insights needed to optimize product assortments and boost profitability.

See Trends and Maximize Profits

With our core Front Office Platform, all your category management questions are just a few clicks away. Whether you need information at the category, subcategory, brand, department, or SKU level, Taiga has you covered.

Benefits:

  • Improve product performance and optimize space allocation using SKU volume, growth, and drain data.
  • Drive profit through data-driven vendor negotiations.
  • Access key metrics by category to track the performance of brands and individual SKUs.

Success Story: Fuel City

Fuel City, a prominent convenience store chain in Texas, transformed their manual and time-consuming category management approach by adopting Taiga’s Front Office Platform. They now pull years of data across all stores in seconds, ensuring consistency in vendor negotiations and competitive analysis.

 

“Taiga is the category bible.” 

– Ana Flores, General Manager at Fuel City.

 

Matching the Accelerating Pace of Business with Real-Time Data

Have you ever found yourself wondering, “Am I getting old, or is business really moving this much faster?” You are not alone. The reality is, the pace of business is accelerating at an unprecedented rate. As someone who has spent their entire career in tech, I can confirm that the speed of business is indeed increasing like never before.

Technology is driving much of this change. Zoom has replaced the conference room, facilitating decisions within hours rather than waiting weeks for a face-to-face meeting. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is evolving at an exponential rate, and its adoption is becoming more widespread. Social media and the 24/7 news cycle can alter consumer preferences overnight. Inflation is forcing customers to pinch pennies, and state governments are increasing minimum wages. Today, an event on the other side of the globe can empty your shelves by tomorrow morning.

Feeling exhausted yet? You’re not alone!

Your Next Technology Investment Should Make Your Life Easier

Capitalizing on Consumer Trends

Consumer trends are a moving target—they can come and go within weeks. Without real-time visibility into your data, you’ll always be playing catch-up. Your technology should enable you to quickly identify new trends and adjust your pricing, product mix or promotion strategy before the window of opportunity closes.

“The analytics software that is Taiga pulls data in real time. It is user friendly and what you can access in real time is unbelievable”

Maintaining Your Margins

Costs are changing every month, and maintaining your margins on every product is a significant challenge. Let your technology handle the heavy lifting by sifting through data and highlighting key pricing decisions.

Instant Alerts

Leverage AI to detect anomalies in your data so you can resolve important issues within hours rather than days. For instance, if fuel sales drop by 25% at your busiest dispenser, your maintenance team will be alerted, allowing the issue to be resolved before it becomes a painful problem.

Don’t Put the Cart Before the Horse

Before adding new technology systems, ensure you can measure their impact on your business. Take self-checkout as an example—there are many stories about its successes and failures. Having access to the right data will enable you to adjust your strategy as needed to ensure successful implementation.

Lighten the Load and Embrace the Future with Taiga

In today’s fast-paced business environment, real-time information is essential for staying ahead of your competition. Taiga’s Front Office Platform delivers the critical data and insights needed for streamlined, informed decision-making and simplified processes. For more information about how we help our clients leverage real–time data in their operations, contact us for a demo.

Drive Success: Avoiding Software Lemons

Investing in New Software: Avoiding the Lemon

Investing in new software can feel like buying a used car—exciting but risky. The true risk lies not in the cost but in ensuring the technology delivers as promised. Product reviews and feature comparisons often fail to provide the necessary insights to mitigate this risk.

A common pitfall is purchasing a highly-rated product that doesn’t integrate well with your existing systems, leading to increased manual effort and low staff adoption.

Buying Software vs. Choosing a Technology Partner

Convenience retailers are shifting from merely buying software to investing in a Technology Partner that delivers a comprehensive, functional solution, ensuring full staff adoption.

At Taiga, we understand the importance of smooth implementation and continuous education for successful software adoption. Our approach ensures that convenience store operators not only implement our Front Office Platform efficiently but also maximize its potential through ongoing support and training.

Staff Adoption: The Key to Success

Retailers now recognize that staff adoption is crucial for realizing the expected benefits of a new technology system. They seek Technology Partners who prioritize this aspect.

Continuous education maximizes software utilization, keeps users updated with new features, and improves proficiency. Taiga offers monthly tours, biweekly email tips, and regular check-in calls to keep users informed, engaged, and skilled. This leads to higher user satisfaction and better software usage, translating to improved business outcomes.

Versionless Software and Continuous Evolution

Another critical factor in selecting the right Technology Partner is their commitment to ongoing enhancement. Retailers are not just buying a product for today; they are making a long-term investment with a partner that will evolve to meet future needs.

Versionless software continuously evolves without traditional version upgrades, akin to a car upgrading itself while you drive—no need to buy a new one every five years.

Taiga is dedicated to continuous improvement. Our development team incorporates user feedback and industry advancements into our software, ensuring it remains cutting-edge. Users benefit from seamless updates, enhanced security, and the latest functionalities without disruptive upgrades.

Implementation Success Story

FKG Oil, operating 83 MotoMart stores across six Midwestern states, needed a solution capable of handling vast amounts of data and making it accessible for informed decision-making. Taiga’s Front Office Platform quickly began providing MotoMart stores with actionable insights for data-driven decisions.

Conclusion

A successful software implementation, coupled with ongoing training and a versionless approach to software evolution, is crucial for maximizing the benefits of any technological investment. Taiga’s Front Office Platform exemplifies these principles, offering convenience stores user-friendly, continuously improving technology that supports their unique needs.

By prioritizing effective implementation and continuous education, Taiga ensures that its customers are well-equipped to leverage real-time data and drive business growth. Embrace the future of convenience retail with Taiga and experience the transformative power of our Front Office Platform.

Smart Retailing with End-to-End Retail Automation – M-PACT 2024

Join industry leaders as they delve into the world of smart retailing in the convenience store industry. Our president, John Oakley, teams up with Bryan Benner from FKG Oil Co. (MotoMart) and Alan Meyer from Meyer Oil Co (Mach 1 Stores) to explore the transformative power of real-time data analytics. Discover how retailers are leveraging data-driven techniques to drive operational efficiency, inform strategic decisions, and foster organizational innovation. Don’t miss out on this valuable discussion from M-Pact Tradeshow 2024 – watch the recording now!

Insights at the Speed of Business: Why C-Stores need Answers Now

In the fast-paced realm of c-store retail, the demand for actionable insights has surged. However, many retailers overlook the complexity of accessing and utilizing data efficiently. While some cling to the belief that insights are easily attainable with effort, the truth often contradicts this assumption. As the CEO of a prominent data analytics company noted, “Most of the world will make decisions by either guessing or using their guts. They will be either lucky or wrong.” Why can’t convenience retailers simply make informed decisions?

When faced with issues requiring prompt decisions, the manual, labor-intensive process of data extraction, manipulation, and analysis becomes a significant barrier, often resulting in decisions based on intuition rather than informed perspectives. The crucial element in this equation is “time to insight,” as pertinent information swiftly becomes outdated before thorough analysis can be completed. For convenience retailers to unlock the true value stored in their data, their teams need Answers Now.

The Journey from Raw Data to Insights

Convenience stores accumulate terabytes of new raw data everyday. With each transaction, data is spread across various technology systems like Back Office, POS, Loyalty, and ATG. Integrating this data necessitates multiple steps before analysis can even commence. The journey from aggregated raw data to insights is intricate, involving tasks such as data cleaning, categorization, and thorough analysis. Without adequate tools and technologies, this process becomes excessively time-consuming, error-prone, and may yield only fragmented insights. Data insight platforms are reshaping this approach by offering streamlined solutions that facilitate real-time aggregation and AI-driven analysis, thereby extracting maximum value from data. 

 

“My team was skeptical about adopting a new software system. But now that we have experienced the power of real-time data in our business, we will never go back. Taiga’s Front Office Platform has revolutionized the way we operate.”

 

Jason Wittekind, COO, Triumph Energy

 

Crucially, the final step involves data visualization, ensuring insights are presented in an easily understandable and actionable manner for every team member. Envision the potential for your business to thrive when informed decisions are just a click away.

The Perceived Skills Gap

“The analytics software that is Taiga pulls data in real time. It is user friendly and what you can access in real time is unbelievable”

Dave Linder, General Manager,  Mach 1 Stores

When introducing our platform to a new retailer, there’s often an initial assumption that deploying a data insight platform like Taiga would entail significant effort. However, the reality is quite the opposite. Unlocking actionable insights doesn’t demand a team of SQL experts and Data Scientists. Let our automated technology handle the heavy lifting for you. A typical implementation takes less than 90 days from project kickoff to providing data-driven insights for all 

team members, irrespective of their technical proficiency. By bridging the skills gap, Taiga empowers retailers to fully leverage their data’s potential without the necessity of hiring additional technology experts.

The Strategic Advantage of Insight-Driven Organizations

In conclusion, insight-driven organizations hold a strategic advantage in the competitive landscape of convenience retail. By prioritizing actionable insights and investing in the right tools and technologies, retailers can unlock new opportunities for growth and success. With Taiga, the path to informed decisions is streamlined, saving valuable time and delivering Answers Now. It’s time to embrace the power of insights and propel your business forward.

Demystifying “Data Driven” Transformation: A Roadmap for Success

Over the past year, “becoming data driven” has been a central theme at industry events and in industry publications.  The term “digital transformation” has been used to describe the journey from the manual, the analog, and the traditional, towards a future where data is not merely present, but deeply integrated and actively working for us. This transformation promises not just enhanced revenue, profit, and customer satisfaction, but also a profound change in how businesses operate.  For many operators, it sounds too complicated or simply too good to be true – particularly after previous experience with technology vendors that have over-promised and under-delivered.

The purpose of this post is not to sell you on the concept, which has been done ad nauseam, but to make it approachable, understandable, and less daunting. Here’s how you can break down the process into manageable steps and key considerations for a successful digital transformation.

Steps to Digital Transformation

 

1. Selecting Your Partner

Choosing the right partner for your digital transformation is like choosing a co-pilot for a cross-country road trip. It’s not just about the vehicle but also about the company you’ll keep.

a. Cost  Consider the financial investment and the time commitment required from your team.

Is the cost justifiable based on the projected outcomes? 

Will your team need to sideline other projects to implement and learn to use these new systems?

b. Capability  Investigate the full range of what the product can do.  

Is it designed specifically for convenience retailers?  

Does it have existing integrations with the systems that are already in use at your business?

c. Collaboration  Evaluate the implementation process, customer support and partnership you’ll receive. 

Will your vendor lead you through this transformation step by stem or will they simply provide the necessary technology?

Will you have access to training, customer service, and technical support when you need it? 

Our industry is evolving quickly and modern technology solutions have to keep up. Will you be charged for future enhancements and upgrades to the system that you have chosen?

 

2. Sorting Out Your Data

“Good Data” is the fuel for your digital engine. If it’s unrefined or improperly cataloged, it will cause your engine to seize up rather than increasing your horsepower and performance.

a. Real-Time Integration  Data that is days or weeks old will not allow you to take action and address issues before they become big problems.   

b. Cataloging  The NACS Standard of Categorization allows you to perform analysis down to the SKU level.

c. Tailored Solutions  Look for a solution that was purpose built for the convenience store industry. Off-the-Shelf products require huge amounts of customization and integration work.

A convenience specific solution should enable you to analyze promotions, price items, analyze market baskets and prevent losses. 

3. Getting Everyone On Board

Remember, technology is a tool, not a solution. The most advanced systems are worthless if your team isn’t using them.

a. Effort to Implement  How long will it take to integrate with your existing technologies and get the system up and running?

Assess how the technology will be adopted by the users. Your solution provider should have a proven process for implementation, training and the ongoing utilization for each of your user groups.

b. Automate Manual Reporting Technology that can replace batch data extraction and manipulation in Excel will free up time and resources. So does this save time extracting and manipulating data and will it be in real time?

c. Simplifying Other Tasks Consider what other business problems your new technology can solve. What other tasks could be made easier? Pricing? Inventory management? Can the solution help with these tasks? 

 

Embracing digital transformation can be daunting, yet with the right partner, organized data, and user adoption, substantial benefits await within 90 days. Careful partner selection and data organization, coupled with driving user adoption, pave the way for success. Contact Taiga to discuss how we can partner with you on this transformative journey.