Multiple Benefits of DEX in Vending Machines

You can make your Antares operation more efficient by accessing electronic data from your vending machines. Electronic data exchange is a technology with a lot of promise. Some additional investment would be needed, but the payoff would be great, if other operators’ experiences are any indication.

One your route is up and running, you will realize that you have made a worthy investment. With this system in your Antares operation, the drivers will bring back their handhelds and download the data to the company’s home computer. You can then view your machines’ cash transactions on the computer and compare them with the cash collected in the money room. In this way, the driver is unable to cheat you. There are also other benefits that come with this system.

Benefits

The handhelds also recorded sales by column for all the snack and soda Antares machines. This would enable you to tailor your product offerings to customer preference. The machines could be planogrammed so that the best selling items would get the right amount of space. You can mix the spirals with different products, based on the location’s sales history, and thereby menu the columns to sell at a more uniform rate.

Time savings a major plus

By not having to read meters at the Antares machine and count products, a 10-minute job for the route driver will be cut down to less than a minute. The time saved will enable some routes to add one more stop.

By plugging the DEX cable on the handheld into the DEX port on the machine, the driver downloads the transaction data and immediately sees what’s needed in the machine. At the end of the day, the driver will place the handheld into a telephone modem and send the information to the warehouse. The computer will then prepare a pick list for the next day, which warehouse employees use to prepare the next day’s order. There will be no need of the driver to go to the warehouse.

Built in DEX ports rarely have service problems once they are interfacing with the computer. The problem with DEX ports so far has been being able to rely on them.