DEX: Improved Inventory Control

Apart from controlling labor better, DEX allows greater control of inventory. Most software packages that support DEX include reports that offer input on product mix based on individual product sales. These reports can improve sales in your Antares vending business and allow you to eliminate items that are not good sellers.

You can reduce your inventory by selling only items that are good sellers. This will bring the added advantage of requiring smaller vehicles and servicing more locations in less time. Reducing your Antares business inventory will alleviate capital tied up in the warehouse. Forecasting what to put on the trucks for the next day’s delivery will reduce truck sizes or provide the ability to service to more Antares vending machines. You can also make suggestions on what to bring to the account. This will boost route efficiencies significantly.

These metrics can be identified manually, but this would mean more work for the route driver. Item level reporting would provide the basis for more efficient servicing of your Antares vending machines, which of course would come back to improving return labor. These reports will allow a supervisor to know the percent of machine inventory depleted when the driver arrived, the percent filled when he left the location, the number of sold out columns, the number of sold out products and finally the value of the dollar sales.

All of this information will allow the manager to make decisions to improve the location’s profitability. When a driver comes back to the location at the end of the day and “syncs” the handheld to the back end software, a report can be immediately printed and the supervisor can make any necessary scheduling changes. When the money is counted, you can then have another report that gives over/short data.

If an Antares vending machine is only 30 % depleted when the driver arrives to service it, then that means that you may be over servicing the location. This would be a waste of time for the driver. By rescheduling the location for service as a higher depletion level, you can end up saving up on labor cost without compromising service.