Viva energy – Australia’s leading fuel and mobility retailer
Viva Energy provides the fuel that powers Australian travellers and businesses. Its Retail Consumer division, which runs the Shell and Liberty fuel offers, had a strategic plan to become the country’s leading convenience and mobility retailer, and to that end, acquired the Coles Express network of 700 retail stores. On taking over the Coles Express stores, Viva Energy faced a decision about the retail technology it would use to serve customers and run the stores. The choice was between continuing to run the existing ageing solutions, or to replace everything with modern point-of-sale infrastructure. Viva Energy took the ‘higher risk, higher reward’ path, knowing that a state-of-the-art POS would deliver transformative business benefits.
Australia’s leading fuel and mobility retailer
Viva Energy provides the fuel that powers Australian travellers and businesses. Its Retail Consumer division, which runs the Shell and Liberty fuel offers, had a strategic plan to become the country’s leading convenience and mobility retailer, and to that end, acquired the Coles Express network of 700 retail stores, which have been rebranded as Reddy Express. On taking over the stores, Viva Energy faced a decision about the retail technology it would use to serve customers and run the stores. The choice was between continuing to run the existing ageing solutions, or to replace everything with modern point-of-sale infrastructure. Viva Energy took the ‘higher risk, higher reward’ path, knowing that a state-of-the-art POS would deliver transformative business benefits.
The challenge – a 675 store national rollout
Viva Energy selected the hardware and software but still had the biggest challenge ahead of it - how to roll out the solution to the entire store network before the 30th of April deadline for ‘cutting the cord’ with Coles. According to Jason McNamara, who is responsible for transformation, strategic portfolio management, technology and digital at Viva Energy: ‘We knew we couldn’t do the rollout ourselves; we simply didn’t have the resources, and in addition, we didn’t have a reliable and comprehensive list of all the equipment that was already in the stores. We needed to move at pace on this project – rolling out to around 50 stores a week - so we knew we needed to partner with someone with the skills and experience to deliver a large-scale, high-quality outcome at pace.’
‘We went to market’, Jason continues, ‘issuing an RFP designed to understand respondents’ ability to manage pre-stage warehousing of a ‘store in a box’ concept, a comprehensive pre-implementation audit across stores and reliable overnight implementation capability with pre- and post-checks. The RFP also asked about robust processes, and the ability to rollout concurrently across multiple states.’
A clear standout
When Viva Energy reviewed the responses, the proposal from the IMI and Lab3 partnership stood out for three key reasons:
- A proven track record of quality delivery over many years with key clients such as Coles.
- Demonstration of how they would deliver to Viva Energy’s requirements – IMI’s response was comprehensive and professional, and Viva Energy felt: ‘they clearly demonstrated that they know what they’re doing’. IMI detailed its approach to every step and showed how it would bring quality and diligence to a managed rollout.
- A shared business outcome mentality – it was clear from the response that IMI’s mentality was genuinely all about business outcome.
IMI was selected and, as Jason describes, the proposed 4-step plan was put into action:
Staging
‘IMI set up a pre-staging facility in Melbourne and prepared the “Store in a Box” for 675 stores. Its methodology is to do as much as possible in the warehouse, to minimise work onsite. Our Viva Energy technology team did the store infrastructure design and image build, and IMI worked closely with us to refine and optimise the build steps and sequencing, reducing the time needed to build each store, until we were well under our target timeframe.’
Pre-work store audits
‘IMI visited every store to carry out a much-needed audit’, says Jason. ‘They cataloguedand photographedthe current state technology environment in every store, including POS equipment, layouts, distances, cabling, where the National Broadband Network (NBN) was installed, the location of the Wireless Access Points (WAPs) and an audit of our fuel controller infrastructure.’
Pre-install remediation
‘Fuel was particularly complex as some of the existing fuel cabling infrastructure was decades old, but IMI liaised with Gilbarco, which was providing the new fuel controller equipment and between them they were able to address 90% of the remediation work without us needing to escalate to our Viva Energy technology team. Fuel cutovers are notoriously difficult, but due to this diligent pre-work we were able to eliminate the majority of the risk and minimise lost trade time during the overnight cutover window for each store.’
Ship and overnight cutover
‘IMI was really efficient’, explains Jason. ‘They shipped equipment to each store – in the innovative packaging we’d designed to help build excitement with staff – and they unpacked and tested it while the store was still trading, to minimise the time each store needed to be offline.’
Jason describes the highly efficient install process: ‘IMI had up to 11 teams around the country – so we could install 11 stores per night, dramatically reducing the time needed to complete the rollout. At around 7 or 8pm, we’d close the store, and the three-person IMI team (two installers and an electrician) shut down and removed the old equipment, installed the new system and performed a comprehensive set of checks and tests with the store team members. At the start of the rollout, stores were consistently ready to re-open at the targeted 6am opening time the next morning. As our installation team gained “match fitness” however, installations became smoother and more efficient, and in the end, stores were consistently ready for re-opening by 3-4am, with some stores even being ready by midnight.’
Jason continues: ‘Of course, there were overnight issues and unexpected complications, along with cyclones, storms and floods that forced last minute changes to install plans –but it’s a testament to the quality and maturity of the IMI engineers that collectively we found solutions or work arounds that always focused on ensuring our stores could be back and trading as soon as possible. In fact, out of 675 stores, there was only one in the entire rollout where we needed to back out and reinstate the old system and reschedule for another day – way fewer than what we had built into our contingency plan.’
Ahead of schedule
‘We started with two pilot stores,’ says Jason, ‘and then completed the remaining 673 between 7th Oct 2024 and 7th March 2025 – a 19-week rollout schedule, which in the end was completed three weeks earlier than planned, and a full seven weeks ahead of the deadline for separation from Coles. The installation was managed with speed AND quality. IMI was totally invested – everyone was laser focused on the same business outcomes as our measure of success, and we really felt that there was a one team mentality.’
Business goals achieved
The efficiency, fast pace and smooth processes with which IMI managed the rollout meant that Viva Energy could achieve significant business goals:
- Minimal impact to stores, customers and trade – with fewer unplanned outages and a speedy installation, stores were offline for fewer hours than planned, meaning the Viva Energy’s customer service and revenues were impacted as little as possible.
- Early handover - Viva Energy was able to finalise the handover with Coles ahead of the hard deadline of 30th April.
- Execute chosen strategy – when Viva Energy decided to implement a new POS, it knew the strategy carried some risk, but IMI allowed the company to back itself, and successfully execute the desired plan.
- Better customer service – whereas the old POS would slow down or freeze, the new POS is faster, more modern, more responsive, and has faster transaction times. It incorporates customer displays with advertising, full screen touch pin pads for payment terminals and self-serve functionality such as customers entering their fleet card odometer reading themselves. All of which means that Viva Energy can serve customers better and faster than before.
- Team member efficiency – the responsiveness of the new POS, with its large touchscreen, makes operations easier for Viva Energy team members and the system offers far greater flexibility, with tasks that could previously only be done in the back office manageable from the POS.
Jason is delighted with Viva Energy’s decision to engage IMI to manage their rollout. ‘IMI had a genuine investment in our business outcome, not just a contractual agreement’, he says. ‘The quality and consistency of its delivery was second to none – we were always confident that we would get reliable outcomes. It also had the ability to meet the scale needed for a large retail organisation, without missing a single beat. It was the best partner we could have had for the success of this project.’
