Why IoT-ization of Bottle coolers?
the capture of data is becoming easier and more affordable year by year. but the question I get asked at every meeting with a potential customer is what will be the benefit is there a return of investment?
and as my colleague Javier knows better that anyone else is how to work out and calculate value of the investment and what the return is.
but.... a picture is a thousand words and more powerful than even the most complex spreadsheet.
The story
Recently I visited Euroshop Exhibition in Cologne Germany with our CEO Andy McCool. To say that the trip was adventurous would be an understatement. Take it this way - all flights out of Cologne and Dusseldorf airports were cancelled !
Not being able to viably reach our next stop in our trip, we decided to find our way home, and did so through a very small regional airport 2 hours from Dusseldorf.
Very quickly we get through an unusually quiet airport security and look for the first available place to grab some water and a coffee.
Cooler Placement
let me explain to you this photo.
We are in Germany.
The bottler is Coca Cola Germany
The coolers are Frigoglass ICOOL - stunning.
The coolers have asset register of Coca Cola Poland !!!???
3 coolers x 5 shelves = 15 shelves
What we identified
Total Number of shelves with brand products: 3.5!!
Coca Cola water is the Apollinaris brand - nowhere to be seen, but their competitor in the German market is enjoying use of a lovely cooler.
Beer? last time i looked the brand was not into brewing beer or producing wine.
RedBull and the juices are also not pf the same brand.
The entire supply chain process, trade marketing process and everything in between has fallen apart, and this in an investment that went wrong. Nobody has bothered to evaluate the investment and evaluate if it is generating the revenue that was intended to - because here we have 3 coolers that definitely do not generate the target revenue!
How can IoT connectivity and analytics increase revenue?
Imagine a world that that somehow you had the guidance on how increase the utilisation of your assets, increase the revenue generated, and most importantly take the actions based upon this guidance.
And you can have all of this today:
where are the assets i have paid millions of Euros or Dollar for
what are the door openings of the cooler as they represent sales
what was the temperature of the product when it was being sold
Exactly which SKU was sold?
how has the inventory level been during peak time?
what have i invoiced this shop over a period and how that reflects upon the investment?
Utilising embedded analytics to combine previously siloed data to generate actionable insights is the way to gain more visibility and deeper understanding of processes, services, and customer experiences.
Summary
When placing Cold points of sale for immedate consumption of soft drinks and beverages, you need to have the tools in place to ensure return of investment and constant revenue generation. Dips in revenue have to quickly communicated and neccesary actions taken to recover.
You dont want to be someone responsible for coolers like the ones in the image above!
Adam Antoniou
CCO
