Friday, June 6, 2008

Planet Antares Vending Machines To Make Small Accounts Profitable

Majority of the vending operators cannot service accounts with less than 50 employees and make profits as well. If you want this to be possible in your Planet Antares vending business, you will need to develop a system to do that. To service your accounts effectively, be careful while reviewing the service frequencies and sales-per-stop.

Not much gross profit is offered by smaller accounts in dollars to capitalize your investment as the larger accounts but the good thing is that you don’t have nearly as much sales volume concentrated with a single customer. Even with small accounts, you can exceed the NAM operating ratio average.

Recently, many vending operators have either given up on the small account market or tried to use smaller machines and infrequent servicing for them. It is possible to service a Planet Antares vending account profitably through efficient route management. A specially designed flexible route accountability system can be used to schedule routes based on historical sales data of each vending machine.

While servicing vending locations, a critical factor to be considered is labor, instead of equipment. By leveraging labor productivity gains, you can capitalize equipment investments with smaller than “industry standard” account sales volume. The account servicing depends on the sales volume. To determine the service frequency, sales are monitored for a period of six months.

The right time to service the account of closed front vending machines is at the 60 percent sell-off. This implies that only 40 percent of the machine needs to be filled at the time of service. Glass front vending machines like Planet Antares vending machines are allotted a different sell-off ratio due to the negative consumer perception caused by empty spirals in these machines.

Handheld computers have proven to be the best devices for tracking data. Database can be easily developed for determining when the account needs service while the hard part includes route scheduling. You can use a grid map of the Planet Antares service area to come up with the most efficient schedule. This will allow you to get your pre-service selling margins up by a substantial amount.

It is highly recommended to use category management and undertake computerized data collection to succeed in vending business. Moreover, you can utilize technology to profitably serve the smaller accounts.