KSS Offering Several "Grades" of Software

FLORHAM PARK, N.J.-- KSS Inc. will launch a "Choose Your Grade" campaign, offering retailers and fuel wholesalers a choice in fuel price management software. KSS also is introducing a new Consulting Division that will complement its technology and help retailers, wholesalers and dealers implement business intelligence and analytics to improve gross profits, the company said.

Mimicking a standard fuel pump, KSS will offer several "grades" of its PriceNet and RackPrice software to easily adapt to retailers’ or wholesalers’ business requirements in this difficult economic environment.

-- Licensed Grade: As the company’s long-standing delivery model, KSS will continue to offer its software in a premium site-licensed format that will give users complete control over the application. All software and associated systems are located at the user’s headquarters and maintained by the customer’s IT staff.

-- Hosted Grade: Available for small- and medium-sized organizations, KSS will offer its solutions in a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) format, letting retailers and wholesalers experience the benefits of the systems without significant upfront technology investments. Under this model, the software, database and other necessary information would reside on KSS servers and be maintained by KSS staff.

-- Subscription Grade: Gives users a choice to "rent" KSS software on a month-by-month basis instead of purchasing a license outright. The software is installed on the user’s existing system, but is charged on a "pay-as-you-go" basis covering the license, implementation and annual support costs.

-- KSS Consulting: Offers consulting services to help retailers and wholesalers extract maximum value from their fuels pricing strategies and processes. This new division, separated from the traditional software technology business, will benchmark existing pricing capabilities as the basis for improvement initiatives, as well as introduce innovation and best practices into the pricing of fuel and other site-level facilities.

"Choice is the key word with this new campaign. In these tough economic times, companies still need technology to remain efficient and increase profits. We want to have a flexible business model that will be adaptable to individual customer needs," Bob Stein, KSS president and CEO, said in a statement. "The ‘Choose Your Grade’ delivery model will bring that flexibility to retailers and wholesalers that want to optimize their fuel price management and increase profits. KSS Consulting will leverage our 100-plus years in human capital of global fuel pricing expertise to KSS users and non-users of our solutions."

PriceNet is a comprehensive pricing solution that supports the key tasks and stakeholders involved in retail fuels pricing, from capturing field-based intelligence at the site level to the generation of price proposals, via comprehensive pricing rules or price optimization, to consistent and timely implementation. High levels of automation and an ‘exception-based’ approach ensure a rapid response to competitors and market conditions, and allow pricing analysts to leverage the power of pricing analytics, according to KSS.

RackPrice is an end-to-end wholesale pricing solution and includes modules for price-generation automation, reporting/analysis, competitive price prediction, price-volume modeling and price optimization. The system helps wholesalers meet volume targets at the maximum possible margin by improving its pricing processes and responding more rapidly and effectively to market moves, the company stated.
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