Monday, June 23, 2008

Lesser Delivery Trips For Planet Antares Vending Business

An obvious way to cut down on fuel costs for your Planet Antares vending business is to use less gas by reducing the number of deliveries. This will make better use of the driver’s time and provides more value to the operator for the same wages and health care costs.

If you have not been working on this till now, it is the right time to start optimizing your routes. The best way is to look at certain “metrics” for each Planet Antares vending machine and then plan on updating both planograms and delivery schedules.

It is much easier to collect and analyze the appropriate metrics with the help of a modern vending software system. In spite of this, the job can be done without one. Start looking at recent services at each Planet Antares vending machine and then consider the following metrics:

a. percent deleted

b. percent filled

c. number of sold out columns

d. number of sold out products

e. value of dollar sales

The goal in chalking out schedules and planograms is to service the Planet Antares vending machine when it is as depleted as possible with no sold out products. Usually there is a certain amount of sold out columns that may be acceptable because studies show that you will only lose the sale if the customer does not get what he wants.

Apart from the damaging 60% rise in the cost of energy, operators are facing rising healthcare and labor costs and lower manufacturer rebates. All these issues together can seriously lead to decline in business profitability. However, Planet Antares vending operators can adopt the practice of reducing delivery trips, to mitigate the impact of rising costs and falling rebates.