Getting Your Fizz to Pay Off with BI - ' Next Up' (
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: Canning the Bum Vending Machines">
"Margin Minder jumps off the page at you, and its all on one page. Other systems you had to bounce around in it or click tabs to get the information you need."
Next in store is for RC to look at routing tools to get the most out of salespeople and trucks. Metten said that RC is looking at tools that will help to plot out routes to see whats most efficient—of particular importance in these days of rising fuel costs.
"We go too often, unfortunately, to our customers," he said. "If we could call on them two instead of four times a week and not hurt volume, it would help as far as a cost-cutting measure."
RC will also be using UXT to study what vending machines are paying off and which are becoming big, humming paperweights.
"We found, we place a lot of vending equipment on full service, which is, we put a vending machine in front of a beauty shop or factory," Metten said. "Our driver delivers the product, we take the money out, and we pay a commission on the right to sell drinks.
"We have 6,000 pieces of equipment on the market. We have a commitment to purchase 500 annually. We found that with many that weve placed, companies have changed, and a lot of pieces of equipment werent paying out anymore."
RC could use Salients tool to target the nonprofitable vending machines, identify their location, call on the customer to see if theres a better way to service the equipment, or maybe just go and pick it up and put it somewhere else where the company could make some money off it, Metten said.
"It took me five minutes to identify a customer, where previously it would have taken five months," he said.
And that is time that RCs managers can devote to what truly matters—inventing and distributing more fizzy and nonfizzy things to drink.
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