SPS Commerce & Maverik: A Retail Data Success Story

Who is Maverik?

Founded in 1928 as a two-pump gas station in Afton, Wyoming, Maverik today operates more than 270 stores across ten western states and employs 4,000 people, making it the largest independent fuel marketer in the Intermountain West. The retailer provides an outdoor recreation-based motif in stores to engage shoppers and support its claim of being “Adventure’s First Stop.”

How did Maverik choose SPS Commerce

As Maverik continued to expand its operations and increase assortment complexity — including extending the BonFire™ food line made fresh in stores every day — leaders recognized that the company’s sales data was becoming increasingly isolated in silos and difficult to access by legacy information systems. This was limiting the quality and timeliness of available insight into the consumer buying trends across their stores.

“Maverik had become a data-rich company but needed to transform into a leader in shopping insights,” said Maverik executive director Joey Hobson. “We knew we needed to better organize, synthesize and simplify our category management data, so that our programs and customer experiences could stay at the industry forefront.”

Maverik executives began researching available technology options to support this objective. After an RFP process, the team ultimately selected the cloud-based Analytics solution from SPS Commerce, rebranded as “Mav-Nav” by Maverik. The solution’s highly intuitive user experience equips the Maverik trading partner ecosystem with on-demand access to a repository of fresh, aggregated data and metrics for making informed business decisions.

Bringing It Altogether

The partnership began with SPS Commerce meeting with Maverik’s internal teams and 30 key vendors and suppliers to learn the business and ensure the needs of all parties were accommodated. The analytics solution was then quickly deployed via the cloud, followed by user training. Today, twenty-four customizable reports offer actionable insights on everything from in-store SKU and category performance to point-of-sale (POS) metrics, consumer analytics and more.

Vendors pay a fee to access Mav-Nav. Twenty-seven vendors signed up at initial launch, with double-digit percentage increases in enrollment during the two years that followed. As of early 2017, more than 150 external users are generating more than 30,000 reports annually from the analytics solution. Internally, there are more than 130 Maverik corporate users including the entire category management team and executives. Personnel in finance, store operations, and food service also log on to the system almost daily.

According to Hobson, 80,000 reports were generated through Mav-Nav during the most recent calendar year. The most popular reports include SKU rank and Sales Summary that allows business users to drill down into the sales data from the category to individual product performance level over various timeframes to monitor trends.

“The SPS Analytics solution is now widely accepted as the single source of truth and official language of our trading network, and it is the backbone of everything we do in category management,” Hobson said. “We all see the value in it, and the level of cooperation across our internal and external teams is best in class.”

Hobson cited Maverik’s “big-six” beverage suppliers as an example of the improved collaboration. “The conversations between our category managers and drink vendors used to revolve around how much store space they demanded,” he said. “Now, with the insight we have at our fingertips, the discussion is more around how much space each vendor deserves. This closer alignment of inventory to demand has made the beverages category far more efficient and profitable for all.”

Record Performance

Hobson said that Maverik posted back-to-back sales and profit records for 2014 and 2015 — an accomplishment that he attributes directly to the collaboration between Maverik and its trading partners using Mav-Nav. Maverik formally recognized SPS Commerce with its 2015 Best Category Management Insights Provider award for the solution’s value to their company.

“We’re very grateful for the partnership we’ve built with SPS Commerce over the last few years,” Hobson said. “Working with the SPS team has been transformational for Maverik, and now we can’t imagine doing business without them.”