Because most vending machines sell low priced items, growth and boosting sales is difficult to achieve without reducing operational costs. Each operator decides what scale of operations is manageable and adding more vending machines is not always the answer.
Reducing operational costs
Management Suite can help you improve the operational efficiency of your vending machine business. When you log into our vending management software there are many inventory management tools. In this blog post, we will highlight some of the features that can help you reduce operational costs, which you might not have been aware of.
Save on labor and fuel costs with pre-kitting
The fastest way to economize your operational costs is to cut down on re-stocking, product waste, and unnecessary visits to your fleet of machines, using Nayax’s inventory management tools. When you know the exact amount and types of products missing from each machine, restocking can go a lot faster. Nayax’s telemetry system allows you to access real-time accurate data and react immediately.
In NayaxVend, Nayax’s vending machine management software, you can see all the products and their placements in a single vending machine by looking at its product map. From the product map you can download a picklist, a spreadsheet showing all the products that need more stock, and the number of items that need restocking. A picklist can easily be printed or accessed via MoMa, Nayax’s mobile management app.
With picklists, you can pre-kit the stock for each machine at the warehouse and save the driver from having to count what stock is missing when they arrive at the vending machine. Instead, they will arrive with a basket with the exact stock they need to refill and get straight to work packing the machine. They will also not need to bring excess stock, risking food and drinks getting spoiled.
Accurate restocking with Visit to Visit
When you generate a picklist it’s accurate to the point it was generated. Nayax has an option to generate a picklist using statistics collected from the last visit. The Visit to Visit feature, technology unique to Nayax, looks at the sales that occurred between the upcoming visit and the last visit to plan what stock to pack for restocking.
The Visit to Visit feature takes a manual snapshot of the machine’s inventory status, which is taken whenever personnel approaches a machine for cash collection or restocking and presses a button confirming they have been serviced the machine.
Picklists can help operators know exactly what items to take with when restocking vending machines
The Visit to Visit feature gives operators a fuller picture of a specific vending machines’ activities and provides you a better idea of items that might typically be missing or sell out fast in addition to the actual items listed as missing. Packing stock with a picklist generated with the Visit to Visit statistics lets you know which extra items to pack at the warehouse based on observed behavior.
Save a lot of time using DEX files
If you are familiar with DEX files, making use of them in NayaxVend can save you a lot of valuable time when it comes to price updates and cash accountability. If all your vending machines have the same product layout you can update the product map in one go. A DEX file also takes snapshots of a machine’s situation at regular intervals, with the length of the intervals chosen in NayaxVend. In a DEX file you can update the prices remotely and understand which items are missing.
Reduce expenses with Smart Alerts
Another one of Nayax’s inventory management tools is smart alerts, which assist operators in being more efficient, increase machine up-time and can help operators cut unnecessary operational expenses.. Alerts can be sent to you in real time or set to be sent during business hours via text message or email. Alerts relating to inventory management can also be seen within MoMa, Nayax’s mobile management app.
As with most features in NayaxVend, the settings can be customized to suit your operation’s circumstances. If a machine gets unplugged, the door is not closed correctly, or the machine’s temperature goes up too much, an operator can receive an alert, preventing stock from getting spoiled and landing up in the garbage.
You can also be alerted to more inventory specific issues such as when there are VendOuts (no more products of a specific type are left), a bin is empty, or a product is close to being sold out, ensuring you don’t miss out on sales. You can also use Nayax’s software to check which products are bestsellers and set up alerts for these products so that stock of these never runs low. You can also be alerted if a machine visit is missed, if there are changes to a DEX file, if cash box needs emptying, or the coin tubes need changing.
NayaxVend is jam-packed with features that can make your operations more efficient and make it easier to remotely manage vending machines in far off places or large fleets. If you would like an alert or feature that isn’t in NayaxVend, we encourage you to speak to us. We are happy to work with our operators to make your vending operations smoother and easier to run.
