Vianet Ltd seeks to enhance customer’s profitability through its flexible solutions
Written by: Vianet Limited
Vianet Ltd is a world leader in providing International and UK companies with telemetry and software solutions for data capture and analysis in the leisure, gaming and vending sectors and recently launched its new cashless solutions to the vending sector.
Supplying a full end to end solution to their customers, Vianet’s products enable customers to get complete operating transparency allowing substantial cost reduction and increased sales resulting in improved profitability.
Over recent years Vianet has been key in the development and innovation of machine reporting and cashless solutions in the Vending industry which has enabled International Brand Owners and Operators in the UK and European vending sectors to understand and develop market leading opportunities in this sector.
Steve Alton, Vianet Ltd’s Managing Director, said: “The flexibility of our products and services enable our customers to reduce operating costs, improve rate of sale and optimise their asset utilisation, delivering a compelling return on their investment.
“This applies to both snack and can vending and more recently coffee vending with the growth in bean to cup in the market place.
“Using our unique solutions plus working with our customers to understand their business needs we are helping deliver operational excellence by enabling them to provide a superior vending service in a more efficient and cost effective way.”
Key information
Vianet’s reporting solution Vendexpert provides key management information that machine operators can act on allowing them to make up to the minute informed decisions.
This enables improved operational transparency allowing customers to maximise vending revenues and profit through a variety of ways, including: Reducing operating costs by as much as 30 per cent through reducing staff costs, improving operational efficiency, reducing fuel costs, having planned maintenance improving machine performance and up-time.
Also Increasing revenues through increased rate of sale of 20 per cent, better product and channel insight, improved product range and availability; and latest cashless solutions enabling the consumer to purchase product any time of day even if they don’t have cash all they need is their debit or credit card.
In recent years the UK vending market has seen a rapid decline in cup coffee sales which has probably been driven by the new “coffee culture”.
Consumers have discovered quality barista coffee, bean to cup, which has driven the demand in the vending machines.
Manufacturers have worked hard at delivering new bean to cup hardware to enable operators to supply the coffee the consumer wants, however maintaining the consistent quality on every drink has been a major problem thus not always giving the consumer the best experience and creating a negative reaction.
Providing solutions
Vianet recognised that standard telemetry was not the answer in this sector due to the variation in MDB’s (Machine Data Boards) so a solution was developed enabling both the operator and machine manufacturer access to the data to deliver an “every cup perfect” policy.
Working with a number of manufacturers Vianet has designed new hardware and software which will work with the new coffee vending machines, the telemetry and software running on it have been developed with a flexible interface which enables them to read the machine data from a multitude of different manufacturers.
James Nicholson, Franke Managing Director, said: “A year ago, one of our customers asked if we could provide telemetry in our machines so they could be deployed in various locations and be monitored remotely.
“At the time we could not provide this service as there wasn’t anybody who could provide a solution that could capture the data and transmit it back to us or our customer.
“With this in mind we worked closely with Vianet to deliver a solution for our customers and now they can remotely monitor drink sales along with other key performance measures in our Pura machines.
“We found Vianet’s approach to our requirements extremely innovative and professional; this work has now led to us involving Vianet on our new range of machines to ensure we can capture the right data remotely going forward A key benefit for Franke is the VendExpert platform enables us to also remotely view the performance of our machines which helps us provide our customers with greater support.”
Consistent quality
Developments with the machine manufacturers and operators have enabled both parties to get daily information from their coffee machines ensuring the drink settings are maintained at the required level thus ensuring the quality of every drink served.
Inconsistences are reported via Vendexpert and the operator is able to take corrective action. With the help of these advancements consistent quality barista-style vended coffee is now available in many areas including motorway services, petrol stations, hospitals, retail outlets and offices.
However, managing an estate of these machines can be difficult and costly. Due to the advancements and information provided by Vianet vending operators can now compete in this growing market with a consistent quality bean to cup coffee offering with the knowledge they can get key data quickly and in a format they can action.
Kirsty Norris Operations Development Manager of Costa Coffee, explained: “We have been working with Vianet since the early days of Coffee Nation.
“Vianet has been innovative in working with our machine suppliers to provide a host of information in relation to the coffee we serve, including cleaning performance and brand compliance.
“Vianet’s telemetry enables us to ensure Costa customers get the best cup of coffee possible served to our high standards.”
Increasing profitability
Alton concluded: “Vianet’s aim is to provide commercial propositions for leading vending businesses both operators and brand owners.
“Our transparent vending solutions drive rate of sale and profitability for our customers. Results from all data collected is analysed and reports securely delivered over the internet, so there’s no need to invest in costly back office software. At Vianet, we’re very proud of our business its focus on increasing profitability for our customers.”
