As an unattended retail operator, you already know that the industry is rapidly shifting towards cashless and mobile transactions—especially as a new generation of customers embraces the convenience of cashless like never before. Already, 79% of Gen Zers surveyed report using a digital payment service at least once per month.
But while cashless is the new king, it takes more than cashless to set your operation apart in today’s rapidly evolving business reality. In order to maximize operational efficiency and agility, today’s unattended operators require enterprise systems with dynamic management capabilities to handle what’s happening in the back of the truck and in the back office; paperless processes for receipts and invoicing; robust KPI reporting; and much more.
In addition to cashless, here are the top future-forward capabilities that the right enterprise software should offer your business:
1 | Dynamic Scheduling & Stocking
With customer demands and operational pressures at an all-time high, it is no longer sufficient for unattended retail operators to take a static, inflexible approach to scheduling. Instead, the right enterprise software should save your retail operation time and money while improving customer satisfaction by intelligently scheduling service based on need, understanding exact stocking patterns, and proactively alerting staff to which machines require maintenance. By determining the quantities and items that must be replenished in each machine, then prioritizing which machines need service most urgently, a data-driven enterprise solution can dynamically create consolidated schedules and routes based that reflect the real, demand-based realities of your business. Ultimately, advanced scheduling and stocking insight empowers your operation to make measurable improvements including maximizing service intervals, reducing spoils, and boosting sales.
2 | Accountable Vending Management
In addition to optimizing service, your enterprise software should also be at work behind the scenes to optimize your operation’s back office. For example, you can ensure cash accountability between the sums collected from machines and the amounts counted in your money room by adopting a solution that automates data import from bill-and-coin counting machines. Warehouse, truck, and machine inventory can also be accountably managed with software that supports innovations like barcode-scanning handhelds and an intuitive, web-based interface. Computing sales tax, creating commissions reports, and enabling asset tracking are other features to look for in an enterprise software solution.
3 | Office Coffee & Delivery Services
If your unattended retail enterprise handles office coffee (OCS) or delivery services, your enterprise software should, too. From managing invoices to supporting digitally-signed email receipts, integrating with self-service web ordering, offering pre-pick support, and more, leading enterprise solutions are capable of optimizing OCS and delivery from top to bottom. By leveraging the right software to streamline and automate key logistical processes, you can optimize your customer experience like never before—driving sales, satisfaction, and long-term loyalty.
4 | Integration with Micro Markets
In addition to vending, OCS, and delivery solutions, your enterprise software should also integrate with micro market operations—a growing opportunity in the unattended retail space. To ensure that software is holistic and wide-reaching enough to add value to your micro market, consider a cloud-based solution. Such a solution can greatly simplify micro market operations by providing a single, standard set of tools that manage route scheduling, warehouse pre-picking, and reporting. In addition, your enterprise software solution should enable scalability, supporting the growth of your micro market business.
5 | Customer-Centric Advertising
While it is true that today’s customers demand cashless convenience, they also demand engagement and personalization like never before. To satisfy this demand and demonstrate your ability to meet customers’ ever-changing needs, it is critical to select an enterprise software solution that empowers you to serve up compelling, relevant, and data-driven promotions. In addition to forming one-to-one connections with customers and building lasting loyalty, dynamic digital advertising capabilities also have the power to make a direct and dramatic impact on sales.
6 | Advanced Reporting
Last, but most certainly not least, is robust reporting—a pillar of a modern and future-proof enterprise solution. Your operation needs a solution that will not only create reports for events like sales, inventory, profitability, merchandising, and reordering, but will also make these reports actionable by exporting them to the program of your choice, filtering and sorting them for easy access, and saving them reliably for future use. Additionally, investing in enterprise software that offers customized report writing and collaborative sharing capabilities can dramatically enhance the quality of your reports while shortening time-to-publish.
From targeting customers with relevant ads to tracking retail profitability, your enterprise software should be doing much more than simply enabling cashless transactions. Luckily, USAT’s end-to-end vending solution, Seed Cloud, handles it all, enabling both engagement and efficiency gains. If you’re interested in learning more about how the Seed Cloud suite of software solutions enables these six key capabilities and others to optimize operations, increase sales, and dramatically lower operating costs, click on the link below to Contact Us today!