Smart, Unmanned and Automated Retail

Certainly over the last several years, our lives have become tied around spending more time around technological advancements and gadgets and we are becoming more and more dependent on the use of the computers, mobile phones, apps etc. This also resulted our retail industry to follow this same scenario.

2020/21 have been marked with the COVID-19 flag, which has increased the panic in people gathering around shops, and retail industry has been hit hard. Some of the smart players and inventors of smart devices, and smart appliances have managed to develop and reshape the way retail can be "COVID-safe" as well.

What we want out of this "re-shape" as the end-user is the convenience and safety. With the convenience comes saving time, money and an instant "now" factor. With the safety comes the confidence back in the spending and basically spending keeps the wheels turning in the world.

The retail space has always worked slightly different, and the customer experience as well as the customer satisfaction was the key and it still is to this date. However, now we have smart machines that are serving customers anything from hot beverages, chocolates, or healthy snacks, and hot food while keeping the customer satisfaction high. 

Japan has over 5 million vending machines, and are an absolute vending leader in the world.

Meet Invenda!

Invenda is working hard to introduce Smart Vending Machines globally and has been doing so for the past 4 years.

Let's cut to the chase, and answer 3 important questions:

Why Smart vending?

What does it do?

How will it increase ROI ?

Why Smart Vending?

Smart Vending Machine (SVM) by Invenda, contains a bunch of sensors, a computer, magic boards, and it's connected to the latest and greatest cloud technologies by Microsoft, IoT Hub, and is able to extract a lot of information around its operation, sales, demographics, and most importantly it hosts a massive touch screen panel in the front of the machine where normally there would be a transparent glass. The touch screen is used for displaying products, and product information and purchasing of product, but also it will display adverts, and act as a digital signage screen, or communications medium if placed in the right place, such as train stations, airports etc.

Another great feature is to go fully touchless with the integration of the e-Wallet solution, that way you can also get the Touchless delivery mechanism and the amount of physical exposure is minimal.

Reports and the data that customers can gather out of the SVM are extensive and detailed, and the advertising section is another upsell of the solution, where customers can use the space to upsell their own product or rent the advertising space to organisations that would like some digital advertisements in a funky and attractive locations.

What does it Do?

Collecting information these days is a big thing, and knowing when and where to place your product with the information you have is the key to increase the sales. With the ability to use the optical sensor to learn your market and place product upselling and product combos is really where Invenda Smart Vending machines differentiates itself in the market. When there is no one using the machine the machine is idling but even when it is idling its earning money for the customer, by displaying advertising content. Customer who purchases the machine can on-sell the advertising space to other customers looking just to advertise over the digital screen.

Advertisements can be loaded into the machine online over the CMS behind the smart machines, and it is a very seamless service.

How will it increase ROI?

ROI on a vending machine is a fairly known case and the number crunching has been done many times. Invenda would be happy to get into this detail, but generally with the Invenda machine the revenue is 35% + more than on the standard machine, and this is biproduct of the ability to upsell, create combos, recommended products, plus sell the advertising space.

The machine knows what products it is stocked with, it will have a complete inventory of the products and knowing this information can mean automated ordering and stocking up, which in the end leads to no product sale loss.

Learning the demographics also means learning what products sell most, and therefore placing higher emphasis on the higher selling products can be the key in terms of monetising on the information provided by the optical sensor.

Something that is still not very familiar to the vending industry is the ability for paid advertising which would be able to significantly increase the ROI, but emphasis is not only there, if addition to no product loss there is also a lot less visits by the operators refilling as well as technical visits, which is another plus when it comes to the ROI. Ability to monetise on these facts is massive especially given the fact that the machine cost initially is lower than most of the conventional machines in the market.

At the end of the day this little beauty delivers on both of the critical factors safety and convenience. Abilities to perform all of the additional tasks is just a bonus and the ability to earn the extra revenue compared to a conventional vending machine is simply amazing, especially considering the machine cost to purchase, run and maintain is much lower. The trend of personalisation is also moving from online retail to physical retail and Invenda smart machine sits in the middle due to the fact it can be personalised and experienced as a true shopping intelligence behind all the smarts that are packed into this device. 

visit: www.invendagroup.com