The Importance of Monitoring Your Vending Machine Products
A vendor’s inventory is the core of their business. Every snack, drink, DVD, toy, etc. are all potential revenue or inventory loss. Maintaining vending machine products efficiently and knowing when to purchase and how much are very difficult. Also, it is often risky to introduce new vending machine products because tracking sales accurately is difficult.
In the last blog post, we talked about Alan’s issues with broken machines. Alan, like many other vendors, also has issues with tracking his inventory. For example, in 2012, he spent over $20,000 on vending machine products that were never sold and expired. It is difficult to say if this number is common or smaller compared to other vendors, but $20,000 is a substantial amount of money to have lost, especially when dealing with the profit margins vendors have in the industry.
A vending management system (VMS) prevents such a loss and offers opportunity for vendors, like Alan, to be more efficient in their inventory management.
Achieve Certainty over Your Inventory with VMS
The VMS will inform vendors what vending machine products they need to buy and when to buy them. Based on previous sales and how quickly product is sold through machines, the VMS software will anticipate when vendors need to restock on certain product at the best time. Instead of finding out that some vending machine products are low when needing to restock machines, the software can place orders for vendors if they wish or create a printable “shopping list” for vendors to take with them when they go to make inventory purchases.
The VMS will also allow vendors to purchase the best selling vending machine products to maximize revenue. The system will inform vendors what people are buying not only from their machines, but also from machines other vendors have planted in similar locations, such as offices, malls, parks, etc. This way, vendors will know that they will need to keep more of a certain product stocked in a machine and less of the other products, saving money and earning money because more people can purchase the better selling products.
Vendors will be protected from having a large percent of their inventory expire because their vending machine products are strategically purchased and sold without suffering as much loss. This prevents situations like Alan’s situation last year when he lost a large amount of product because he had purchased too much inventory.
With the Right VMS, Knowledge is Power
With buying the right vending machine products and knowing where to put them, vendors now need less inventory space to sustain their operations. This leaves room for expansion or the ability to save money on a smaller warehouse. With a smaller overhead, vendors worry less about the cost of doing business and can hire less employees for inventory. All of this translates to more money for the business.
Inventory management is essential in running a vending business, and with a vending management system, there are less mistakes made and more money saved.
