FORT WORTH, Texas -- After more than 60 nominations and several weeks of deliberation, the results for PDI's second annual Doing Business Electronically awards are in. Quality Oil Co., Maverik, Mid-Atlantic Convenience Stores (MACS), Holiday Stationstores and joint entrants Buc-ee's and Aloha Gas took first place in five respective categories: automation, forms creation, integration, reporting and environmental stewardship.
"This year's winners have taken Doing Business Electronically to a whole new level," said Austin Skaggs, PDI community manager.
"It is really exciting to watch our customers use PDI/Enterprise, PDI/FocalPoint and PDI/Store Assistant to drastically reduce workload, improve efficiency and even reduce their impact on the environment," he said. "The level of creativity and innovation throughout the community has been incredibly impressive, and it's been an honor and privilege to watch these awards grow over the last two years. In fact, we can't wait to see what companies are going to come up with for next year's awards."
Quality Oil earned its spot atop the automation category heap by using electronic reconciliation to reduce its manual coupon reconciliation process by 200 hours a month.
Maverik secured its win in the forms category by creating cashier forms that send automated alerts when voids, cash over/short, refunds, or price overrides exceed specified tolerances.
In the integration category, MACS is saving 16 hours a day using import profiles to eliminate manual fuel delivery entries.
Holiday Stationstores bested the reporting category competition by running SQL Server reports to improve its stale loss percentages on milk. This year alone, the company has already seen $100,000 in savings.
In a joint submission, Buc-ee's and Aloha Gas topped the list of companies striving to minimize their carbon footprint by reducing paper processes. After integrating PDI/Enterprise with Laserfische, the two chains are handling vendor invoices without using a single piece of paper. The change is favorably impacting the environment and their businesses' bottom lines.
Scot Tomlinson of MACS said his company was pleased with its first place win. "We are very excited to be honored by PDI. This is wonderful award, but the real winning happens every day when our stores save time and money by Doing Business Electronically."
The Doing Business Electronically awards also recognized the top users on PDI Connections, the company's four-year-old online customer portal. PDI made the presentations during the general session of its 2012 Users Conference. First, second and third place winners for each category received iPads and an engraved plaque detailing their accomplishments.
Temple-based PDI provides software, hardware and professional services to convenience retailers and wholesale petroleum marketers. Worldwide, approximately 330 companies operating more than 28,000 retail locations rely on PDI's systems for retail automation, fuel and warehouse management, business intelligence and financial management.
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