Shane Sexton, National Sales Manager at Intevacon Fleet Card Solutions, joins Brian Cohen, ADD Systems Multimedia Specialist and host of ADDcast, to discuss Intevacon’s history; what its proprietary fleet card solves for petroleum marketers; what separates Intevacon from other fleet card offerings; and new features that are coming to their product.
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Brian Cohen: Welcome to ADDcast. I’m ADD Systems’ Multimedia Specialist Brian Cohen, and I’m joined today by Shane Sexton, National Sales Manager at Intevacon Fleet Card Solutions. Intevacon is a gold sponsor for the 2023 BTC, which takes place May 8-12, 2023 at Disney’s Yacht and Beach Club in Orlando, Florida. Shane, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us today.
Shane Sexton: Sure, Brian, thanks for having me.
Brian: Could you start by sharing with us a little bit about Intevacon’s history?
Shane: Yeah, absolutely. Our history starts with our owner. He got started in the fleet business back in 1984, and his father-in-law was actually a Chevron driver that had a Tech 21 card-lock. And, he had asked our owner if he would be able to write a program to be able to pull that card-lock, to get the transactions out of it, so he’d be able to bill his customers a little bit easier. So, that got him started in the fleet business with his first company, which he owned for about 20 years, ended up selling it, and in 2010, decided to get back into the fleet business, and that’s when he started Intevacon.
Brian: Can you talk about what Intevacon has to offer petroleum marketers?
Shane: Yes. We are a proprietary fleet card solution. So, from the very basic, we authorize and capture transactions, to very complex aspects of managing fleet accounts, like: you can use this for billing; offering special pricing; tracking taxes and exemptions on accounts. You have a full reporting capability. So, anything that you can think of that you would need to deal to manage the day-to-day doings of a fleet program, our system can provide.
Brian: Shane, what does offering a proprietary fleet card solve for petroleum marketers?
Shane: The first thing it does is, we run into a lot when we’re talking to petroleum marketers, they have local accounts that come and buy fuel from at their sites that they take care of manually, whether it’s with a house charger or a paper ticket. Those usually get turned into the office and then someone in the office has to bill those customers. So, our solution helps them automate that process by eliminating that manual ticket and giving them a card to use at the site or inside at the register.
Another thing it does is it also allows customers to offer their own card that works across all their brands. A lot of petroleum marketers these days are multi-branded or unbranded. And, by offering their own proprietary card, they could take that card or work at any other sites, whether it’s branded/unbranded, no matter what point of sale they have, or even if they have card-locks, that card will work at all of their sites. So, it gives their customers one card that they can use around there.
Also, if they move to our system, in a lot of cases, especially if they’re coming from a fleet card program that’s backed by a credit card or a bank, we can help them save on the fees that they’re charged. Since we are a primary network card, we don’t run with a bank credit card or on that network. We process on the secondary or auxiliary network, which allows them to eliminate a lot of the interchange costs and credit card fees that they typically see on those networks.
Brian: Let’s talk now about the marketers who are maybe not doing house charges, why should they consider a product like yours?
Shane: Over the years, I’ve read a bunch of articles and seen stats on the value of having your own fleet card. I think one that I commonly use when I’m talking to marketers is: I got this from Oil Express, and basically they say, fleet accounts buy 15 times more gallons per month than just an average consumer. So, the petroleum marketer kind of gets to lock into that fleet business and keeps that customer loyal to their sites, buying more fuel, more gallons, which is a great thing.
Another one that I like to throw out is: sometimes fleet card holders have 10 times more fuel transactions than an average consumer. So, it’s a different clientele that they’re attracting and servicing, but also driving more fuel through their sites.
Brian: Can you talk about some of the features that separate Intevacon from other fleet card offerings?
Shane: The first thing is, we’re a web based solution, so everything is through the web. There’s nothing installed on any of your computers or anything where you manage items. Our system’s a real-time solution, so when you’re making changes to cards or accounts, whenever you change the status of any of those things, it’s effective immediately. We have the ability to offer a wide variety of restrictions that you can place on a card or an account, so you can set cards up to be restricted by product type. You can restrict them to usage, you can restrict them for a day and times, even to specific sites, if you choose. That’s real powerful because it’s actually enforced at the nozzle. Customers don’t get an email after the fact that someone in their company purchased something outside of their guidelines or what they’re authorized to buy. Ours is actually at the time of the card swipe we send down those restrictions.
Our system is, as I mentioned earlier, you can use it to generate bills and invoices, receive payments, so we have a full receivables package. Again, you don’t have to use that, a lot of customers just simply take everything and pass it to their back office like ADD Systems.
And it’s a mixed bag. It’s funny, some of our mutual customers like Scott Petroleum in Mississippi and Daigle Oil up in Maine, they take everything and pass it into ADDs to bill out. Whereas, some other customers like Tiger Fuel in Virginia and A.E. Robinson, they invoice in our system, but they still take those transactions and pass them to ADDs for accounting purposes as well.
We also have a customer portal that they can set accounts up for, so they can log in and see their activity daily and keep an eye on it in real-time, just like the marketer can. As well as, we feel we have a pretty strong pricing and discounting package, where you’re able to set up discount tables for customers on an account by account basis, whether it’s a cents per gallon discount, cost plus, or volume rebates. So, a lot of advantages there as well.
Brian: Are there any new features that customers may not know about yet?
Shane: We do have some new features. The first thing that comes to mind isn’t necessarily new, but rather something that’s growing, and that’s the Intevaon Fuel Network. With the fuel network, what we’re seeing is some of our customers are finding that their accounts actually need to travel outside of their local town. And so, if their card issuer decides to let them travel and use their card, they can join the network. Our marketers are also welcome to put their sites on the network to possibly attract more volume from some other Intevacon customers. So, that’s something that we’re always pushing and trying to educate our customers about, to participate in.
And related to that, we’ve been making a lot of upgrades to our site locator. So, we do have a site locator. It’s web/mobile-based that allows customers, who are traveling the Intevacon network, to find the closest fuel locations to where to may be.
We have a new pricing feature that’s available, it’s called Better Up pricing. It allows a customer to be set up with cost-plus and a secondary pricing table, like a cents per gallon discount. So, if margins are real thin, one pricing may be better than the other, and the system will automatically pick which one is the best option at invoicing. So, that’s a real popular one with the truckstop world, and that’s probably the most recent addition.
Brian: Shane, looking into your proverbial crystal ball, what can we expect to see from Intevacon as we move into the future?
Shane: One thing that we’re going to hopefully continue to expand is, currently customers are able (the ones that invoice in our system) to receive emails or notifications. Our developers are hopefully going to continue to expand and build out the notification system so that our issuers and cardholders can receive notifications either via text message or email about if a site’s down, or it looks like it’s down that someone in the marketers office receives notification that says “hey, you may need to go check that site.” Or, maybe a product isn’t being restricted, “you may want to send someone to go check a setting in the point of sale to get that corrected.”
Again, we’re going to continue to probably push and hopefully grow, the Intevacon Fuel Network, and kind of see how that goes and flourishes. It’s mushrooming in terms of its popularity and its growth. Here in the Southeast, it’s really starting to grow and expand up towards the East Coast and into the Midwest.
We also are always working with some of our equipment partners. A lot of folks ask us about being able to connect to us directly through IP, and that’s something that we’re always open to doing. Right now, we still have a little piece of equipment that gets installed at the site, so eliminating that piece of equipment is something that’s been at the forefront of our customers’ minds and something we’re always wanting to do is to get there for them.
Brian: If someone would like to know more about Intevacon, how can they get in touch with you?
Shane: They can contact me directly. They can email me at ShaneSexton@intevacon.com or give me a call. They can reach me directly at (770) 817-9199. And, of course they’re always welcome to reach out on our website, www.intevacon.com. There’s information on contacting us directly on there as well.
Brian: Well, Shane, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us today, and I look forward to catching up with you in person at the 2023 BTC next May.
Shane: Thanks Brian.
Brian: To learn more and to register for the BTC, please visit www.addsys.com/btc. And, to keep up with the latest happenings at ADD Systems, visit www.addsys.com/blog or connect with us on social media by following ADD Systems on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram or Twitter. If you have any questions about ADDcast, feel free to reach out to us at addcast@addsys.com.
Thanks for listening and have a great day!
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