Parallels of Success: Football and C-Stores

Though completely different from each other, the keys to good performance for both can be remarkably similar.

Football season is here. That makes a lot of people happy, including those participating in the competitive arena of convenience retailing. C-stores and football—from your local pee-wee league to the NFL—go together like touchdowns and extra points.

What might not be as obvious is that success for each depends on concepts and practices that can parallel each other. Take efficiency, for example. The performance of teams and c-stores that demonstrate efficiency usually tracks well over time.

You can see efficiency in the way a football team plays. An offense marches downfield like a machine. A defensive line executes blocking schemes that keep their quarterback upright. A cornerback plays perfect technique to deflect a pass down the sideline. Every one of these examples is a symptom of the coordination and precision that comes with efficient execution.

Efficiency is key in the convenience store industry, too, and, like football coaches, owners can see it play out before them: accurate invoicing, profitable pricing points, the right product mix, promotions that hit the sweet spot . . . it’s a long list.

The question then is, how does one become efficient in sports or commerce? Well, there are countless strategies, but most include the importance of performance feedback through the kind of detailed metrics and measurement available through today’s technology. When you are in the thick of competition, even a small advantage makes a difference, and the granular analysis available from modern software is capable of providing it.

Admittedly, football hasn’t caught metrics fever the way baseball has, but the use of statistical analysis is prevailing, with concepts like tackle probability or win probability effect being accepted that weren’t even in existence a short time ago. The correlation between increased sophistication in data-driven measurement and positive results has become too hard to ignore.

While convenience store metrics aren’t as exotic as some of football’s more colorful examples, their impact is every bit as significant. We should know, because SSCS has had decades of experience developing software that collects, stores, and delivers performance data feedback and financial insight for every part of your business. Then it organizes it and places it at your fingertips for review. We provide a historical record, too, because comparative measurement over time may be the most important measurement of all.

While you’ll still find coaches and managers that grumble about “today’s game” and its dependance on metrics, there’s a reason that the influence of data-driven analytics continues to grow, not as a replacement for human ability, but as a tool to complement it. If you’d like to know a little bit more about the importance of metrics and how our software plays a role in making them useful to c-store operators, give us a call at (800) 972-7727. It just might be a game-changing experience.