The Convenience Technology Vision Group has released its latest Vision Report, “From Signal to System: How C-Store IT Leaders Are Turning Data Into Operational Intelligence,” examining how convenience retailers can move beyond collecting and connecting data to building trustworthy data infrastructure and leveraging AI tools to answer everyday business questions and improve store and company operations.

The CTVG quarterly virtual meeting, held on June 5, 2026, was facilitated by Ed Collupy, principal at Collupy System Solutions, LLC, and featured the presentation by Wells Burke, co-founder and CEO of CodeVine, and Jeffrey Campbell, director of data science at Blend 360. Following the presentation, CTVG members and guests offered their own perspectives and shared real-world experiences with AI and data tools.

Key takeaways in the report include:

  • The Shift from Managing Data to Using It: Retailers have mastered data collection, integrating systems, and building reports. But with AI doing that work in seconds, the question now is how to evolve access into repeatable operational actions. “The most valuable thing you might see out of this is when you see some of your store employees start using a tool and asking a question. I think that’s fantastic because we don’t know what they might be looking for, what they might find out from a solution like this,” said Donnie Rhoads, director of business development, The Convenience Group, LLC.
  • Real-World AI Experimentation Is Delivering Fast Results: Retailers described employees connecting company data to AI tools on their own and discovering promotional, labor, and basket-pairing insights. “We have just started using Claude a lot in the last couple of weeks. And it has been producing some out of this world reports for us and getting forms and all kinds of data driven things that we are just plugging in,” said Jhaddaka (JD) Leverette, I.T. manager at Prince Oil.
  • Organizational Readiness: Where to Start and How to Scale: Rather than rolling AI out to everyone at once, leaders suggested starting with a few capable users and growing from there. “We have a lot of the data already and a lot of the processes, they just aren’t tied together and [we] need to find a way to make them work together. It’s not necessarily integration of the data, it’s actually the process,” said Bill Ridge, VP of technology at Eastern Petroleum Corporation.
  • Security, Risk, and Where to Draw the Line: The group weighed how to balance experimentation with data protection, noting that anonymized transactional data presents little concern, whereas PII (Personally Identifiable Information) warrants caution, and commercial licenses carry no-training commitments that protect proprietary data. Many indicated taking a cautious approach such as Rance Wells, vice president of IT at Toot’n Totum Food Stores LLC. when he said: “We’d rather jump into the water with a shark cage than just jump in with the sharks.”

The online Vision Report format includes the must-read ‘CTVG Views’ summary, easily digestible Key Takeaways, and a presentation video and slides.

To download this and other Vision Group Network Vision Reports, please click here.