What Are You Making On Planet Antares Vending Machines?
You will be surprised at the number of vending operators who claim to be business owners but have no clue about the money being generated by their Planet Antares vending machines.
Do you know what you are making from your vending route?
If you are an entrepreneur, you must be aware about the financial position and performance of your equipment and vending locations at all times. This does not refer to the spread between the cost of goods and their selling price. What is important is to know how much you are making per hour, after all expenses.
For this task, you have several methods that can be used. Business accountability is an important factor for enhancing the efficiency of any vending operator’s activities. When you have no idea about the amount of profit made by your business and your liabilities, it will be very difficult to plan future growth and expansion. Moreover, you will not be able to make accurate estimates I financial statements.
Basically, there are two ways to track your business:
1. Manual calculations
This involves mathematical calculation without the help of any software. From your Profit and Loss Account, take the “Profit” figure and divide the amount of time spent on your business by it.
2. Electronic manipulation
This involves the use of software that will automatically generate financial figures for your business. Accounting software like QuickBooks or Quicken can be used for tracking your Planet Antares business operations.
The manual calculations may take some extra time as compared to the use of software. However, the time invested in such tasks is well worth the efforts. If you are still doubtful about the need for tracking your business revenue and profits, ask any successful entrepreneur and you will know what I’m talking about.
Once you are aware of your monetary position, you can make better, informed decisions about the vending machines, products and locations that will help you achieve the business objectives.
Vending Technology And Data Transmission Systems
Almost every vending machine company has incorporated technology in its equipment. The difficulty arises when you have to decide the data transmission system to be used. This decision will depend on the needs and characteristics of the location where data has to be captured.
If your Planet Antares vending machines are placed in transient locations with fluctuating sales levels and located in far away places requiring long travel times, online data delivery will be the best option for you.
In contrast, business and industry (B & I) locations with stable and reliable work force have higher predictability and function well with handheld data delivery, which is less costly as well. However, locations with fluctuating work force or occasional second shifts can use wireless transmission as the effective solution.
Whatever method of data transmission you choose, it should be able to capture and report the quantity of sales for different product brands in the Antares vending machines. This makes it easier for the route drivers and service personnel to undertake their duties as they will not have to count the product placements by hand.
For vending route drivers, it is much more expensive to conduct manual counting of product placements by brand. The cost of running a route is much higher than the benefit derived from it, as it goes upto 40 to 50 cents per minute.
This information or data is very important for planning your product mix and include popular items in your vending machine merchandise. It is similar to the function of a merchandiser at a supermarket, who places the products on shelves according to their sales performance and ability to enhance the profitability.
Some of the slow moving products may be replaced with test products instead of totally eliminating them from the stock. These are products that have not been purchased by a lot of people and are possibly not wanted by the location customers. The product mix will be determined by using the space to sales analysis techniques.
You must focus on enabling sale of products at uniform rates. For this, you will have to allocate two or three columns in your Planet Antares vending machines for the bestsellers. There are two main benefits of such a practice. Firstly, you will get higher sales potential and secondly, there will be longer intervals between accounts servicing time.
A good data transmission also makes it easier to know all brands, their performance in sales and revenue generation. This gives you the power to predict the products that need to be placed at different locations by route drivers. No need to make double trips for each machine to stock them with high demand products.
