Retailer selects till products for flexible, cost-effective approach to its fuel business

The Co-operative Group has integrated three Torex products into the till systems it uses for its fuel forecourt business. 

The Co-operative added 142 forecourt sites to its estate when it acquired the Somerfield business in 2009.

It wanted to integrate the till processes for the forecourts business into its homegrown InControl electronic point-of-sale (EPoS) system and chose Torex to deliver this ‘fuel’ functionality.

First, Torex Fuel Wrapper, a new pump control software, has been wrapped around the Co-operative’s InControl PoS system to offer an accurate, auditable weights and measures pump control system. It ensures petroleum and convenience goods can be combined in one transaction, rather than having to process the two transactions separately, which was previously the case.

The vendor said Torex Fuel Wrapper was designed specifically to meet the challenges of a changing landscape as fuel and convenience retailing come together rapidly, creating the need to combine complex fuel PoS with all its compliance requirements and with normal convenience POS. With the Torex Fuel Wrapper the Co-operative can now deliver the benefits of its own InControl POS solution for C-stores to its forecourts. 

It will deliver quicker service and an improved offer for the customer, to translate into improved customer satisfaction and loyalty. The system also gives store managers greater control of all petrol pumps to prevent petrol theft and misuse of the pumps. Torex also developed a specific solution to feed transaction data in existing formats to head office.

Greater control at the pump 

Second, Torex has added electronic funds transfer (EFT) capability to the Co-operative’s proprietary EPoS system, allowing the retailer to process fuel cards. The EFTLink also allows the Co-operative’s InControl PoS to process oil company cards as well as fuel cards, as the technology facilitates an interface with all of the oil companies’ terminals.

The third product, Torex SMS Reports, offers a suite of fuel reports that ensures wet stock can be easily managed by a company such as the Co-operative, which is relatively new to operating in the petroleum market.

The new products have minimised investment overheads for the Co-operative, by allowing it to reuse exsiting PoS hardware. With the hardware remaining the same, very little training or adjustment is needed for staff to use the updated systems and software, and the Co-operative can take on new fuel sites and quickly roll out the solutions to save both time and cash.

The Co-operative’s fuel programme manager, Eivind Brown, explained: “Fuel forecourts add a new aspect to our business and it has been great to have an expert on board who we could rely on to help us get the most out of our forecourts.”

He added: “Feedback from the forecourts indicates they are really benefiting from this collaboration.”