The new release focuses on support for volume and/or profit growth strategies, pricing process agility (to cope with cost/price volatility), improved compliance monitoring,

and capabilities for dealing with rapidly changing customer demand. The update also includes a major architectural upgrade to the latest Microsoft .NET standards, to deliver greater speed and to allow customers to benefit from hardware rationalization initiatives that support multiple installations on one server, as well as server virtualization, clusters and Web farms.

PriceNet version 5.0 includes enhancements in the following areas:

• Performance optimization - the ability to optimize prices to grow volume subject to a cash profit goal, in addition to the existing optimization aimed at growing profit for given volume plans. This will enable fuel retailers to identify and grasp opportunities to increase volume market-share at the site level.
• Demand forecasting & strategy modeling - the ability to forecast volume by site and grade over longer periods and quantitative analysis of where current strategy may be restricting opportunities for volume or margin growth.
• Price auditing & compliance - a step-by-step trace of how prices are derived and an auditable log of any policy/strategy changes to enhance price compliance monitoring and reporting.
• Event pricing flexibility - the ability to schedule alternate pricing strategies/scenarios where events affect fuel demand or margin performance. Within event pricing, event planning can be set as a one-time activity or a re-occurring activity for set time periods to meet various market demands. Events can be set at single stores or distributed across multiple stores.
• User experience - new screens with user-level configuration, wizards to guide users more quickly through key activities, dynamic page layouts and the ability to contact KSS support directly from the main pricing screen and send all relevant data to facilitate quicker responses.

PriceNet 5.0 will become generally available beginning in mid-February.