Z Energy crunches the numbers

Tom Fuyala says the 11 Ants platform 'changes the rules of the game' for retailers.

Z Energy is the latest company to jump on the big data trend, doing a deal with analytics company 11 Ants Analytics to help the service station firm better understand customer preferences and buying habits.

Z will use the 11 Ants retail analytics platform (RAP) to analyse data collected from more than 200 service stations throughout the country.

The platform will be used to help the stations manage stock, pricing, discounts and promotions.

Z's general manager for retail, Mark Forsyth, said the company had decided to go with 11 Ants after looking locally and internationally for the best solution.

"We chose 11 Ants' RAP for several reasons," Forsyth said.

"It is a powerful system that can give us valuable information in next to real time, it is easy to use and it is innovative Kiwi technology."

Forsyth said the service stations collected a lot of point-of-sale data as well as through Fly Buys, but had previously not had the technology to analyse the information collected.

He said the 11 Ants platform had already delivered a number of insights which had helped the company decide where to focus.

"Using RAP we have seen certain trends that we hadn't become aware of yet through our traditional systems and that's allowed us to act straight away," Forsyth said.

The 11 Ants company was set up in 2005 by chief executive Tom Fuyala. The retail analytics platforms represented "the new frontier" for convenience stores, Fuyala said.

"Every retailer is spending a lot of money capturing and storing data. But to transform it into true customer understanding, that is where the real space for differentiation lies," he said.

"We have been able to show Z that RAP can help do this 'out of a box' without having to hire a team of expensive data scientists. It changes the rules of the game completely for them."

The company already has customers such as Tesco and cruise line company P&G as well as a number of smaller companies. Fuyala said the software was capable of analysing billions of pieces of transactional data in seconds.