For the past 11 years, global IoT, telemetry, and payment solutions provider Vendon has supported premium coffee and vending machine operators. It explains how its IoT telemetry and payments solutions helps track and manage machine fleets remotely and deliver a high-quality product consistently.
Vendon’s existence is not just a story of serendipity, it is a story of growth.
Previously operating under Draugiem Group and now a part of the multinational technology company Azkoyen Group, Latvia-based Vendon has grown to be a leader in providing service for vending and coffee machine businesses in more than 80 countries globally. A chance encounter in September 2009 between a vending business operator and capable engineers with creative minds, turned a simple request for an SMS payment solution into a complete telemetry solution and cashless payments provider.
According to Vendon CEO Kristians Vebers, before Vendon was founded in 2011, vending operators were often clueless about what was going on with their fleets, especially operators managing 1000 to 10,000 machines. Revenue was lost, machines broke down and were standing idle, and overall, vendors had no information about the products or ongoing sales.
“It was clear that technical solutions were necessary to first see what was happening with the machines in real-time and, furthermore, to be able to plan the on-site visits with the necessary number of products, making the most use of resources,” Vebers tells Global Coffee Report.
A telemetry solution
Vebers says IoT and telemetry platform Vendon is a modern, easy-to-use platform for coffee and vending machine monitoring and management in real time. It provides solutions for the Hospitality Restaurant and Catering (HoReCa) sector to help ensure a machine’s longevity, maintain high- quality coffee, and make invoicing more convenient.
“One of the most important things for HoReCa businesses is to make sure machines are properly working, eliminating any downtimes, and always providing customers with high-quality coffee. Without telemetry, all that becomes almost impossible as there is no data to give an insight into what’s happening,” he says.
Vendon sales reports also provide a detailed overview of transactions, location, or product performance, and allows the analysis of consumption patterns, bestselling products, and underperforming machines.
“This enables businesses to make data- based decisions and generate real-time insights and predictions to optimise machine performance, get a detailed insight into purchase tendencies, adjust product prices remotely, replace products, see the number of remaining ingredients, and plan refillings ahead,” Vebers says.
Vendon solutions are compatible with most machine models and systems, collecting and analysing all data in online platform Vendon Cloud.
Payments made easy
Part of Vendon’s diverse product range are contactless payments. Vebers says this solution helps to increase customer convenience and business sales, as well as reduce operational costs.
“As the demand from consumers is growing, we give operators a chance to adjust and capture every sale. The contactless payment solution avoids unnecessary visits for cash collection and increases sales at the same time, while giving a choice to customers. Companies can also choose when to receive money transfers to their bank account daily, weekly, or monthly,” he says.
Vendon developed the loyalty and payment platform QuickPik to increase customer engagement, and convenience. It provides an additional option for employees or clients to enjoy complimentary snacks and coffee as a reward.
“With QuickPik you have full control over who gets what benefits and can manage everything remotely in Vendon Cloud. Employees get free or discounted products and beverages more conveniently simply by scanning a QR code with their phones. They can also easily top up their wallet with cash, link a payment card, and pay with QuickPik,” says Vebers.
Why customer satisfaction is key
Client feedback is Vendon’s most important indicator for developing new functions and features that are adapted and integrated with its application programming interface.
“Time and money that is saved because of smart planning of machine refills and technical maintenance visits along with resolving most issues and monitoring processes remotely sometimes turn out to be a crucial factor to survive harder times that were caused by the pandemic,” he says.
“Growing inflation is another factor that requires optimisation of business processes and relatively smaller investments in telemetry solutions, which lead to operational excellence that is necessary not only to keep the business alive but also to be at an advantage over others.”
Vebers says Vendon works closely together with machine manufacturers to ensure it delivers precise data in real time to clients.
“Vendon solutions allow our clients to take their business to the next level and develop new goals in being even more efficient and therefore provide the best consumer experience to their customers,” he adds.
What began as a two-person affair has now evolved into a tight-knit business of eager professionals, with a network of partners in various regions providing top-quality services across the globe.
“Following the growing popularity of coffee machines, our future efforts will focus on providing greater options to coffee service operators, while we continue improving our existing solutions,” Vebers says.
For more information, visit vendon.net
This article was first published in the November/December 2022 edition of Global Coffee Report. Read more HERE.