HelpCenter

Market Location Placement

Items to remember, when determining the location of your micro market(s):

• Location matters, always ensure your market is setup in a high traffic area or employee destination
• Markets will NOT succeed if you place it in an area that is not convenient for consumers to access
• Be aware of alternative options nearby - is there high or low competition

Understanding Product Adjustment Terminology

Make sure that everyone in your organization understands the following inventory adjustment terminology and classifications and how they are applied to inventory management in AMS.

RESTOCK: Adding product inventory to the market.

STALE: Removing expired or damaged product from market inventory

REDUCTION: Removing products from a market that are under-performing.

Tip

OVER: Adjustments to inventory to account for overages - not to be used for normal restocking; Unknown inventory discrepancies

SHORT: Adjustment to inventory to account for shortages Unknown inventory discrepancies

ERROR ADD/SUBTRACT: Adjustment due to error; Identified issues such as incorrect driver adjustment or warehouse miss-pick or product push. Used for unknown inventory discrepancies with the physical inventory feature.

How to Identify Flip or Flop Markets

Use the Account Profitability report to help identify your A, B, and C accounts. This report will also identify your largest volume accounts, as well as most profitable accounts.

Micro Market Classification

When analyzing the Account Profitability report data, use the following guidelines to classify your markets:

• A customer equals $100K +
• B customer equals $50K to $99K
• C customer equals $26K to $50K

Variables to consider, include:

• Product pricing
• Utility fee (commissions)
• Investments
• Service frequency
• Driving distance
• Overall profitability of the account

C Markets

Do the following to classify markets as C:

1. Location, location, location - Evaluate customers by location, and always ensure your market is setup in a high traffic area or in an employee destination. The market will not succeed, if it is placed in an area that is not convenient for consumers to access. Be aware of alternative options nearby; is there high or low competition nearby? Is this a white or blue-collar location? Know the location demographics.
2. Run the following reports. There is a synergy between the reports. They build on one another, so run them in the following order:
   1. Account Profitability report - Identify top performing and under-performing market; this report also identifies product stales totals.
   2. Market User report - Run this report for the last 6 months to identify the number of active market users at this account. Compare with the total number of active users signed up with this account.
   3. Product Sales report - Use this report to identify top selling and under-performing products.
   4. Unsold Products report - Use this report to identify under-performing products.
   5. Operator Fee report - Use this report to provide details of fees deducted by market and total by your whole organization.

Analyzing the Report Data

So, which key variables do you analyze for uncovering important information? Even if an account is an A customer, due to its Gross Profit percentage, does NOT mean that it is performing optimally. Always consider the Active Market Users percentage and the percentage of transactions done with credit cards versus market cards.

Your goal is to target 50% or more of Market Card usage in your markets.

Table 1: Analyzing C Market Data

Tools to Flip all Markets

Do the following to flip a C account into B or A accounts:

1. Implement new features in your C account markets.
2. Re-merchandise the market(s).
3. Update market(s) signage.
4. Perform regular inventories to ensure the market is properly stocked.
5. Continue training/retraining of your route drivers.
6. Communicate with your client account contacts.

Is your Market a Flop?

Use the following factors in determining if you need to pull your market:

• Geography
• How far do you need to drive to service this market?
• Route density
• Minimum sales per week at $500
• How much equipment is at the location?
• What is my ROI – understanding operator fees?

Other Useful Reports

The following reports are also useful for determining whether you can flip your market or if you need to close it.

Using the Market User Activity Report

1. In AMS Report Center, run the Market User Activity report
   
   Figure 1: Market User Activity Report Data
   
   
2. The following data generated by running the Market User Activity report can help you understand your customer’s purchasing behavior:
   • Start Balance Count—Tracks market card starting balances given during grand openings.
   • Money Added Count—Captures bulk monies added to market users.
   • Adjustment Count—Identifies individual market user adjustments; this is normally used for refunds.
3. Click the previous adjustment figure cells in the report to drill-down into these adjustment figures and take a closer look at the data. The following figure displays who, when, and at what amount these starting balances were given away.
4. Once you drill down, this report identifies the following:
   • Person/driver that made the change/adjustment in AMS, who classified the reason for the adjustment
   • Date of the adjustment
   • Dollar amount of the adjustment
   • Customer account
   
   Figure 2: Market User Activity Report - Drilled-down Data
   

Using the Product Activity Report

This is a very powerful report. This report enables you to track product sales, sales, and restocks across ALL markets in the following ways:

• Individual Products - Use this data for tracking new products in the field.
• All Products - Use to track ALL products and compare to your top performing products for each of your markets.
• Product Groups - Use to track products sold that were tied to a discount or client subsidized products.
• Product Category - Run your reports by product category for ALL your markets. This is effective for tracking fresh food performance.

Table 2: Product Activity Report Sample

The previous table displays data for the 20oz CSD Product Category. The following data describes your target range:

• Target 90% - 100% for optimal performance.
• 70% - 90% indicates that you need to better control/reevaluate your min/max levels.
• Less than 70% indicates that you need to reevaluate your products.

Look at Sprite Zero. This beverage sold twice what regular sprite sold, identifying trends of what consumers are buying in your market. Look at CF Diet Coke, appears to under-perform, because of the number of stales recorded.

Start looking at product activity by category, to better understand what is driving your business (Products > All). 

Using the Operator Fee Report

The newly updated Operator Fee report now includes the following new fields:

• Old Net Sales—Captures sales for kiosks that were offline the previous week
• Old Cc Charge—Captures CC recharges for kiosks that were offline the previous week
• CC Purchase and CC Rate—These two CC fee rates are now broken out, separately
• Operator Tier—Displays operator tier fee
• Flat Fee— Weekly flat fee associated with the operator tier fee
• Service Fee—Displays weekly service fee amount
• Modem Fee—Displays the weekly cellular fees
• Tablet Fee—Displays the weekly tablet fees
• Lease Payments—If participating in the lease program, you can view your weekly lease payments
• Misc. Fee—Use this for payment deductions, such as the ALWP program
• Market Anniversary Date—Displays and calculates each market YTD fees paid from the market start date
• Market Max Threshold—Displays your annual threshold, which is tied to the tier structure
• YTD Fees—This tracks each individual market fees
• Net Due—Amount that is reconciled with the operators each week

However, the default view for this report does NOT include all fields. You can include additional fields in your view by clicking the Show/Hide column.