Hi All! Vending Software Developer Here

[VendHero]

Hi Everybody,

Happy new year!

I hope this post doesn't seem spammy, I'm not intending on breaking forum rules.

I'm a software developer who has worked in the vending industry for a while now. I've become really frustrated that my industry colleagues usually have to settle for sub-par and really expensive software or using diaries and spreadsheets to manage their business.

I want to make a product that is really reporting-oriented, because, as we all know, vending is not such a high margin industry and involves lots of manual work, so I want vending business owners to really be able to maximise their profits and plan their routes effectively, all the tools exist now, but it seems that no-one has brought them together in a cost-effective way.

Would anyone be able to let me know what puts them off the solutions currently on offer and what they'd consider paying for such a service? I want to make a business out of it, obviously, but also want to help my colleagues and the industry do better as a whole. I'd really appreciate any advice you can all offer.

Thanks!
Carl

[Snackmore]

Carl

Welcome, Matt on here 'Easyvend' recently had a quote from Vendman but it was very basic and expensive. He is the font of all knowledge and will give you the answers you need

[VendHero]

Hi Steve,

Thanks for your quick response! I've contacted Matt like you suggested. If you or anyone else have any general ideas on what would appeal to you, please share.

Thanks again,
Carl

[Mark@YorVend]

Hi Carl,
Not sure how other people go on with recording sales in sites, but I was thinking the other week how easy it would be on a tablet using a specially designed app.

At the moment I have a little clipboard with a list of all the products I stock on a sheet, with a little box next to each one. I write the name of the site and date at the top of the sheet, then go in and count how many of each product has been sold. Then I go back outside with my sheet, and count the correct number of each product into my vending bag from the sheet.
In theory I should be able to look back at my records for each site and work out sales of each products over the year, and account for every pot sold.

In reality what usually happens is:

I forget to print off the sheets so have to write on the back of other sheets, or tatty bits of paper.
I forget a pen and have to ask for one in every site.
I forget to put the site name or date on them making them useless for record keeping.
The sheets get blown around and wet on bad weather days and end up unreadable.
The sheets get put on one side and forgotten about as soon as I get back home instead of putting them on the computer or filing them away properly.

If someone could develop an app for a tablet that let you do it all with a few clicks would really be on to something. I would imagine it could start with a list of sites categorised into 'runs', where you click on a site name and it brings a list of products for you to enter sales for that visit. It would then save the sales from that visit and add them automatically to some sort of graphs and tables. We would then be able to see all previous site sales at the touch of a button whilst we are actually there on site. This would mean that we could know what lines of stock have been tried previously in each site, when we tried them and how they sold, which would be great for when we decide to swap lines over.

A lot of us vending operators just rely on a combination of memory and instinct half the time, as we don't have time to go dragging out paperwork when were there on site. Having something there at the touch of a button would be my idea of heaven.

Mark@yorvend

[Style]

You would forget to charge your tablet / phone. It would die on you half way round and you would have to go home for some paper and a pen!

[VendHero]

Hi Mark,

Thanks for replying to my post, I think you and I agree on what would make good vending software!

The organisation I currently work for are treading over themselves trying to get data out of their software but are not doing too well, so I was going to build a very reporting-oriented product so that vending operators could use to improve their route management and sales in a very logical way, without relying on their instincts too much!

For example, I drew up an idea where the software calculates not only the optimal route for you to take to refill machines to your financial benefit, but your best selling products and your margins (by machine, customer and postcode even) and maybe lets you see how sale price effects sales overall, so you can run tests in different machines when you take on new products to determine the optimum price. The vending business is a really time intensive one, as I'm sure you know, so I want to allow people to stop wasting so much time with (lost) paperwork!

As far as mobile devices go, my business partner is actually a mobile developer and we're starting from there rather than tacking it on as an after thought.

If you have any other suggestions or thoughts, please let me know!

Thanks,
Carl

[Mark@YorVend]

You would forget to charge your tablet / phone. It would die on you half way round and you would have to go home for some paper and a pen!

True! I am very forgetful.

But for those that use a van/car, they could just have a charger with them for such eventualities? I know a lot of people don't mind using a pen and paper, and I know people like Pablo are very well organised when it comes to record keeping/planning. But for people like me, who can't wait to dump all the gear back in the warehouse and get down the pub, it would be great to have all the info recorded as I go.