What is a Par Level Approach?
Merchandising is the idea of showcasing product to stimulate customers into making a purchase. For the vending industry, this means to keep machines stocked with the optimal amounts, or a par level, of products. However, how much of one product should be put in a vending machine to maximize profit and reduce inventory spoilage? What products in what areas sell more than other products? These are difficult questions to answer as a vendor.
If an owner has many machines all over a city or region, it becomes difficult to be the expert in every one of them. Vendors rely on drivers to keep the par level on their machines on the route, but even for them, having a route of 20, 30, 40, even 50 machines becomes difficult in keeping up with what is selling where. Most of it is left with gut instinct and previous experience.
VMS Provide Optimized Par Levels and Peace of Mind
Without having accurate data to inform vendors and drivers on what to stock and how much to stock in vending machines, par level is not reached, and profit is lost. Similar to what we discussed in the last blog post about inventory management, our vending management system (VMS) supplies vendors with the exact information needed to have an optimal par level for products in every machine.
For example, the stock of every machine will be reported in real time, giving vendors a chance to see when product is being sold. Depending on how well the machine sells its products, the software will let the vendor know when would be a good time to restock it, so the machine never runs out, customers can always purchase product, and an optimal par level is achieved.
Our VMS supports vendors in their efforts for optimal merchandising. It allows them to learn what is being sold when and what levels of product are necessary to achieve par level. The VMS is a powerful tool to maximize the potential of a vendor’s business.
For larger vending operations, vendors rely on drivers to restock machines, so in the next vending resource post, we will discuss how our vending management system will make drivers go to the machines that need to be serviced and save a lot more time.
