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Cantaloupe Systems announced that North County Vending (NCV) is expanding its deployment of Cantaloupe's SeedŽ wireless monitoring system throughout its San Francisco, Calif. branch. On the heels of witnessing a reduction in need from four trucks to less than three to service 600 machines, and after verifying Seed's ability to integrate with its existing vending management software, NCV decided to deploy SeedŽ throughout its entire Bay Area operation where it anticipates that an additional three trucks will come off the road. Upon completion of the installation, NCV will use this branch as a model for deployment for its other branches throughout the western U.S.
The SeedŽ solution is an automated route and merchandising management tool for vending operations that gathers data from machines, wirelessly throughout the day to drive maximum route efficiencies. By analyzing inventory levels, cash in the machine and geographic considerations, SeedŽ automatically generates optimal delivery schedules and pick lists based on real-time, item level sales data. With this information, orders are loaded by warehouse personnel for each machine, providing drivers with more time to focus on servicing their routes. The SeedŽ solution also reconciles daily cash collection and has tools to capture spoilage and inventory variances. Finally, SeedSync, a customizable integration tool, integrates all collected data with existing vending management or other software packages ensuring company-wide information integrity.
John Sowell, president of NCV, said that the installation of SeedŽ has changed the company's ability to monitor and benchmark its vending business, and helped to drive significant improvements in its operating results. "Now we can manage the business for profitability with far greater accuracy and focus," he commented in a prepared statement.
"We knew we were over servicing, but never knew how much until we implemented Seed," Sowell noted. Driven by SeedŽ technology and supported by the Cantaloupe Consulting team, the combination of wireless remote monitoring, dynamic routing and pre-kitting enabled NCV to increase its fills per machine visit by 75 percent, and they anticipate cutting the amount of trucks at the branch by 37.5 percent without reducing revenue.
"Over the past few years, we have envisioned a system that would dynamically build routes daily using real time data and our specific parameters of when machines should be serviced," stated Sowell. "Our experience with Cantaloupe over the past two years has given us the confidence in dynamic routing, verification and that the Seed solution can integrate seamlessly with our existing vending management software package we have been very pleased with Seed and its integration tools. I recommend Cantaloupe to anyone who wants to improve their bottom line."
Cantaloupe's chief marketing officer, Anant Agrawal, stated that NCV's full-branch adoption of the SeedŽ solution is a significant step forward for Cantaloupe. He added that he expects several other large, full-line vending operators that have experienced similar results as NCV, to continue to expand their implementation of Seed's dynamic routing, machine pre-kitting and other powerful operational tools available on the SeedŽ Web application. Especially in the current economic climate, Agrawal said, "Operators recognize that they can benefit with major cost savings when the Seed solution can enable them to experience a 35 to 40 percent route consolidation and cut other costs while still improving customer service overall."
NCV started testing Cantaloupe's SeedŽ solution on four unique San Francisco Bay area routes. Each geographically adjacent route had a different vending environment in order to evaluate the effectiveness of the system. With the results, in addition to producing direct savings from route efficiencies, NCV also found significant value through:
- Increased average weekly route revenue from $9,357 to $14,971;
- Increased gas efficiency of 4 MPG by eliminating excess truck inventory;
- Reduced product shrink and damage with the pre-kitting process;
- Reduced machine downtime due to proactive, rapid response to machine malfunction;
- Improved customer service and the marketing advantage of a small carbon footprint.