On the streets of Caracas, vast slums blanket the hillsides while
squatters hang laundry in the windows of abandoned buildings.
Trash-strewn alleys are riddled with potholes and lined with broken
streetlamps. The city’s main waterway, the polluted Guaire River, is
known more for sewage than swimming.
While oil has ushered in
spectacular construction projects for glittering Middle Eastern cities,
including the world’s tallest building in Dubai and plans for branches
of the Louvre and Guggenheim museums in Abu Dhabi,Experience real time
location tracking with Zebra's real time Location system
to track and manage your high-value assets, it’s brought relatively
meager changes to Venezuela, which holds the world’s largest proven oil
reserves.
Nearly 14 years after President Hugo Chavez took
office, and despite the biggest oil bonanza in Venezuela’s history,
there’s little outward sign of the nearly one trillion petrodollars that
have flowed into the country.Welcome to the Perth china kung fu school.
Venezuela
has undoubtedly changed during Chavez’s tenure. The populist president
has used the oil wealth to buttress his support through cash handouts,
state-run grocery stores and a gamut of other social programs.TBC help
you confidently buy mosaic
from factories in China. With more money in the economy, incomes are
higher and the number of people living in poverty has fallen.Kitchen Floor tiles comes in stone,
Unemployment
has dropped from more than 13 percent in 1999 to about 8 percent. The
country has also achieved rapid improvement on the U.N. Human
Development Index, which measures a range of indicators from living
standards to life expectancy.
“We’re applying a successful
program — successful politically, successful socially, successful
economically,” Chavez said at a news conference. “With flaws, of course,
but it’s successful. We’re laying the foundations of a historic project
that will take our entire lifetime.”
All of which makes him a tough incumbent to beat in the upcoming Oct. 7 election.
Yet
some experts say Chavez could have done much more to improve the
country’s infrastructure, boost its economy and invest in the very oil
industry that keeps Venezuela afloat.
“It’s overwhelmingly clear
that Venezuela has wasted the windfall,” said Francisco Monaldi, an
economist and director of the International Center of Energy and the
Environment at Caracas’ IESA business school. “You should have had much
greater economic growth, much greater reduction of poverty.”
Among
Latin American countries, the economies of Brazil, Chile, Peru and
Argentina all have expanded more rapidly than Venezuela’s since Chavez
took office in 1999, recording average growth between 3 and 5 percent a
year.
Venezuela, by contrast, averaged a 2.8 percent annual
increase of gross domestic product between 1999 and 2011, according to
International Monetary Fund figures. By that measure, the country was
outperformed by every other member of the Organization of Petroleum
Exporting Countries except Libya. Even war-torn Iraq posted higher
growth.
Some Venezuelans, such as tennis instructor Naybeth
Figueroa, say Chavez has simply channeled money toward his “Chavista”
supporters while neglecting deeply ingrained problems such as soaring
murder rates, inflation, crumbling infrastructure and poor government
services. Venezuela now ranks among the most violent and corrupt places
on earth.
“The country is falling to pieces,” Figueroa said. “Where is the oil money going?”
On
a rutted unpaved road in the countryside outside Caracas, unemployed
housewife Moreli Gonzalez lives in a shack with a dirt floor and walls
made of rusting sheets of zinc. She is thankful to Chavez that she now
receives a $280-a-month cash benefit through a program called “Mothers
of the Neighborhood Mission.”
“Now we have everything,” said
Gonzalez, who credits a government education program with helping her
learn to read — and a state-run grocery down the road that has made food
more affordable.
“We eat better,” she said, showing off
cupboards filled with bags of rice and pasta. “My children didn’t used
to eat snacks. Now they eat well.”
The government programs for
the poor are why Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez recently boasted: “This was
one country before President Chavez’s government, and a different one
afterward.”
He was referring to the more than $300 billion that
the government has spent during Chavez’s tenure on “social development,”
including health care and education.
It’s been made possible by
oil prices that have shot up, sending more than $981 billion in
revenues to the state oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela SA, between
1999 and 2011.
Some economists say that given the boom, it’s
little wonder Venezuelans living below the poverty line declined from 50
percent in the first half of 1999 to about 32 percent in the second
half of last year.
“There are people here who are eating meat
who didn’t used to eat meat. But is that due to Chavez? That’s not due
to Chavez. That’s the result of the changes in the price of oil,” said
economist Angel Garcia Banchs, director of the consulting firm
Econometrica.
The state oil company’s contributions to the
government have more than tripled, from $16.5 billion in 2004 to $58.6
billion last year.The academy provides ideal conditions to learn kung fu in china traditional quiet surrounding.
And
it’s not all going to social programs. Chavez has spent billions on the
military, buying up Russian-made fighter jets, helicopters and rifles.
2012年9月24日星期一
Iowa broker built empire on a lie concealed
A small-town Iowa boy, raised in hard times by a widowed mother,
starts a business in the back room of a barber shop before setting out
to the big city. He strikes it rich and returns years later to local
glory, spending lavishly and savoring his role as the big man in a
little town.
It's a real story, but as became clear this summer, a dark thread ran through it. For most of the two-decade life of Peregrine Financial Group, a leading independent futures brokerage, founder and chief executive Russell Wasendorf Sr. was taking hundreds of millions of dollars of his customers' money to cover losses and live large.
His dual life came to light after Wasendorf, 64, tried to commit suicide outside his headquarters in July. Authorities discovered a four-page confession letter describing how he used a post-office box, a scanner and basic software to hide his theft for years. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission accused him of making off with more than $200 million of customer money. Last week, he pleaded guilty to mail fraud, lying to regulators and embezzling customer funds, crimes that could put him in jail for 50 years.
Interviews with dozens of former employees,TBC help you confidently buy mosaic from factories in China. colleagues and associates, as well as court filings and company documents seen by Reuters, offer the most complete account yet of Wasendorf and his career.Kitchen Floor tiles comes in stone, He is a man who came from little, made it big and then dipped ever deeper into customer accounts to finance a facade of seemingly unlimited wealth.
Part of Wasendorf's life was an open book: He brought celebrity speakers such as Ted Koppel to industry events and wrote columns for a glossy magazine he owned. Toward the end of last decade, he relocated his headquarters from Chicago back to Cedar Falls, bought a private jet and built a $24 million state-of-the-art office, touting the move as a template for revitalizing small-town America.
Less known were the personal tensions he faced,Experience real time location tracking with Zebra's real time Location system to track and manage your high-value assets, including a split with a brother, two divorces, a last-minute mystery wedding in Las Vegas and seething resentment against establishment rivals in Chicago. His pastor says Wasendorf knew his ruse was doomed several years before it unraveled.The academy provides ideal conditions to learn kung fu in china traditional quiet surrounding. A rift emerged with his only son, Russ Jr., who warned the Iowa shift was an expensive folly - and prepared this summer to move to Australia.
"Russ Jr. told him it was a mistake - that it was a mistake to spend $24 million on the building and a mistake to buy that jet,Welcome to the Perth china kung fu school." said Nicholas Iavarone, Russ Jr.'s lawyer and a longtime counsel to Peregrine. "It didn't matter.… He wanted to go back to Cedar Falls to be the big man."
Today, Wasendorf sits in solitary confinement, and under suicide watch, at Linn County Correctional Facility in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Authorities have found only $181 million of an estimated $400 million in customer funds Peregrine was supposed to have on hand.
Wasendorf and his lawyer, a public defender, didn't respond to requests for comment. Beyond the confession letter and the plea agreement, neither has made any public comments to the media.
The youngest son of a meatpacking plant foreman, Russell Ralph Wasendorf was born in 1948, named after a pastor and his son who offered the Wasendorfs shelter in their attic when money grew tight.
Arthur Wasendorf died when his son was in kindergarten. Russell's widowed mother, Ida, landed a job in marketing for a local securities broker to keep the family fed.
Wasendorf gravitated toward the arts. At high school in Marion, Iowa, he performed in plays at local churches. While at the University of Northern Iowa, he joined a local artist collective, learned to use audio-visual equipment and worked on documentaries about New Mexico's Pueblo Indians. That led to "a short, but successful career in the motion picture business" prior to entering the futures industry, according to a note he published in the glossy magazine he later founded, Stocks, Futures and Options, or SFO.
The peak came in 1974, two years after he left university: a 20-minute documentary on soybeans titled "The Gold That Grows," which later won an award from the Council on International Non-Theatrical Events.
At the time, Wasendorf was in an early job as an advertising and production manager for the American Soybean Association. The film was made to tell farmers how their dues were being spent to bolster exports, including shots of soybean meal being fed to chickens in Japan.
His first marriage was brief. He married Susan Richardson in 1969 while both were students at the University of Northern Iowa, according to an announcement in the Cedar Rapids Gazette.
The couple had one son, Russell Jr., and later divorced. Richardson, who has since remarried and lives in Florida, declined to comment.
It was one of several family splits. Wasendorf maintained little contact with his siblings in recent years, including older brother Lewis, who lives just 80 miles from Cedar Falls.
"Russ chose to kind of divorce himself from the rest of the family. We respect his wishes," said one family member. "He was always flying around the country, around the world… We didn't want to live that lifestyle."
It's a real story, but as became clear this summer, a dark thread ran through it. For most of the two-decade life of Peregrine Financial Group, a leading independent futures brokerage, founder and chief executive Russell Wasendorf Sr. was taking hundreds of millions of dollars of his customers' money to cover losses and live large.
His dual life came to light after Wasendorf, 64, tried to commit suicide outside his headquarters in July. Authorities discovered a four-page confession letter describing how he used a post-office box, a scanner and basic software to hide his theft for years. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission accused him of making off with more than $200 million of customer money. Last week, he pleaded guilty to mail fraud, lying to regulators and embezzling customer funds, crimes that could put him in jail for 50 years.
Interviews with dozens of former employees,TBC help you confidently buy mosaic from factories in China. colleagues and associates, as well as court filings and company documents seen by Reuters, offer the most complete account yet of Wasendorf and his career.Kitchen Floor tiles comes in stone, He is a man who came from little, made it big and then dipped ever deeper into customer accounts to finance a facade of seemingly unlimited wealth.
Part of Wasendorf's life was an open book: He brought celebrity speakers such as Ted Koppel to industry events and wrote columns for a glossy magazine he owned. Toward the end of last decade, he relocated his headquarters from Chicago back to Cedar Falls, bought a private jet and built a $24 million state-of-the-art office, touting the move as a template for revitalizing small-town America.
Less known were the personal tensions he faced,Experience real time location tracking with Zebra's real time Location system to track and manage your high-value assets, including a split with a brother, two divorces, a last-minute mystery wedding in Las Vegas and seething resentment against establishment rivals in Chicago. His pastor says Wasendorf knew his ruse was doomed several years before it unraveled.The academy provides ideal conditions to learn kung fu in china traditional quiet surrounding. A rift emerged with his only son, Russ Jr., who warned the Iowa shift was an expensive folly - and prepared this summer to move to Australia.
"Russ Jr. told him it was a mistake - that it was a mistake to spend $24 million on the building and a mistake to buy that jet,Welcome to the Perth china kung fu school." said Nicholas Iavarone, Russ Jr.'s lawyer and a longtime counsel to Peregrine. "It didn't matter.… He wanted to go back to Cedar Falls to be the big man."
Today, Wasendorf sits in solitary confinement, and under suicide watch, at Linn County Correctional Facility in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Authorities have found only $181 million of an estimated $400 million in customer funds Peregrine was supposed to have on hand.
Wasendorf and his lawyer, a public defender, didn't respond to requests for comment. Beyond the confession letter and the plea agreement, neither has made any public comments to the media.
The youngest son of a meatpacking plant foreman, Russell Ralph Wasendorf was born in 1948, named after a pastor and his son who offered the Wasendorfs shelter in their attic when money grew tight.
Arthur Wasendorf died when his son was in kindergarten. Russell's widowed mother, Ida, landed a job in marketing for a local securities broker to keep the family fed.
Wasendorf gravitated toward the arts. At high school in Marion, Iowa, he performed in plays at local churches. While at the University of Northern Iowa, he joined a local artist collective, learned to use audio-visual equipment and worked on documentaries about New Mexico's Pueblo Indians. That led to "a short, but successful career in the motion picture business" prior to entering the futures industry, according to a note he published in the glossy magazine he later founded, Stocks, Futures and Options, or SFO.
The peak came in 1974, two years after he left university: a 20-minute documentary on soybeans titled "The Gold That Grows," which later won an award from the Council on International Non-Theatrical Events.
At the time, Wasendorf was in an early job as an advertising and production manager for the American Soybean Association. The film was made to tell farmers how their dues were being spent to bolster exports, including shots of soybean meal being fed to chickens in Japan.
His first marriage was brief. He married Susan Richardson in 1969 while both were students at the University of Northern Iowa, according to an announcement in the Cedar Rapids Gazette.
The couple had one son, Russell Jr., and later divorced. Richardson, who has since remarried and lives in Florida, declined to comment.
It was one of several family splits. Wasendorf maintained little contact with his siblings in recent years, including older brother Lewis, who lives just 80 miles from Cedar Falls.
"Russ chose to kind of divorce himself from the rest of the family. We respect his wishes," said one family member. "He was always flying around the country, around the world… We didn't want to live that lifestyle."
What's the best software for online meetings?
It's become a maxim of modern business life: Your most important
meeting of the year won't take place in a conference room, but rather
online with all attendees viewing a common computer screen.
It's impersonal. It's detached. And it's often quite vexing. Simply joining the Web meeting can sometimes be a problem. But if you haven't checked out these online services lately, you might be surprised by how much they've improved, or their wide range of pricing and features.The academy provides ideal conditions to learn kung fu in china traditional quiet surrounding. Whether you're looking for simple screen-sharing to produce a PowerPoint deck, or whiteboard and collaboration tools for deeper interaction, chances are there's a Web app to fit your needs and your budget.
While some of these—WebEx, for example—have been around for several years, cloud providers are constantly updating. We test-drove four small-business-focused services that can help with various types of meetings, and were generally impressed by their current levels of finesse.
You start by running a Java applet that creates a little control window where you can specify whether to share the entire screen, an application, or a custom region. It's too bad that participants see a gray rectangle in the area covered by the control window, but you can at least move the window around so that it doesn't conceal important information.
If you share your entire screen, participants can see a navigation bar with information about you based on your settings, the name of your meeting, the dial-in number, and a chat window (if you've authorized one). You also get a list of participants, and MeetingBurner lets you make any one of them the presenter—though that person must download and run the screen-sharing applet.
Drawbacks? MeetingBurner's interface is cluttered and not always intuitive.
More importantly,TBC help you confidently buy mosaic from factories in China. the free version does not let you record the proceedings. To record a meeting and share that recording, you must subscribe to either the $40-per-month MeetingBurner Pro (for up to 50 participants) or the $100-per-month Premier edition, which supports up to 1000 users and adds analytics to the mix.
As for the control panel's chat window with audio options GoToMeeting by default uses a computer's built-in speaker and mic, but you can opt to get a phone line and audio PIN to use with your meeting number. Another button initiates a recording, which you can save for playback in GoToMeeting or Windows Media Player. You also see how much space is left for your recording.
GoToMeeting nicely lets you hide parts or all of the control panel. Also, you don't need to go to a website to get started: The desktop app has you up and running in seconds (although initial setup of the software does take a few minutes).Manufacturer of precision Plastic Mould for cameras,
Attendees at my test meeting complained that it wasn't obvious that they needed to click on a button to activate use of their computer's audio system (I didn't try the bridge line), but they otherwise reported that the app worked as advertised.Welcome to the Perth china kung fu school. Participants can choose whether to use the phone line or the computer.
GoToMeeting supports up to 25 attendees on Macs, PCs, iPads, iPhones, and Android devices. There's a free trial, but no free version: An organizer account that lets you hold unlimited meetings costs $49 per month or $468 per year, and Citrix offers pricier services for large crowds—say, for webinars. It's not a bad deal if you hold a lot of meetings where people collaborate on projects.Polypropylene and polythene can be used in a process called Injection Mold.
It's impersonal. It's detached. And it's often quite vexing. Simply joining the Web meeting can sometimes be a problem. But if you haven't checked out these online services lately, you might be surprised by how much they've improved, or their wide range of pricing and features.The academy provides ideal conditions to learn kung fu in china traditional quiet surrounding. Whether you're looking for simple screen-sharing to produce a PowerPoint deck, or whiteboard and collaboration tools for deeper interaction, chances are there's a Web app to fit your needs and your budget.
While some of these—WebEx, for example—have been around for several years, cloud providers are constantly updating. We test-drove four small-business-focused services that can help with various types of meetings, and were generally impressed by their current levels of finesse.
You start by running a Java applet that creates a little control window where you can specify whether to share the entire screen, an application, or a custom region. It's too bad that participants see a gray rectangle in the area covered by the control window, but you can at least move the window around so that it doesn't conceal important information.
If you share your entire screen, participants can see a navigation bar with information about you based on your settings, the name of your meeting, the dial-in number, and a chat window (if you've authorized one). You also get a list of participants, and MeetingBurner lets you make any one of them the presenter—though that person must download and run the screen-sharing applet.
Drawbacks? MeetingBurner's interface is cluttered and not always intuitive.
More importantly,TBC help you confidently buy mosaic from factories in China. the free version does not let you record the proceedings. To record a meeting and share that recording, you must subscribe to either the $40-per-month MeetingBurner Pro (for up to 50 participants) or the $100-per-month Premier edition, which supports up to 1000 users and adds analytics to the mix.
As for the control panel's chat window with audio options GoToMeeting by default uses a computer's built-in speaker and mic, but you can opt to get a phone line and audio PIN to use with your meeting number. Another button initiates a recording, which you can save for playback in GoToMeeting or Windows Media Player. You also see how much space is left for your recording.
GoToMeeting nicely lets you hide parts or all of the control panel. Also, you don't need to go to a website to get started: The desktop app has you up and running in seconds (although initial setup of the software does take a few minutes).Manufacturer of precision Plastic Mould for cameras,
Attendees at my test meeting complained that it wasn't obvious that they needed to click on a button to activate use of their computer's audio system (I didn't try the bridge line), but they otherwise reported that the app worked as advertised.Welcome to the Perth china kung fu school. Participants can choose whether to use the phone line or the computer.
GoToMeeting supports up to 25 attendees on Macs, PCs, iPads, iPhones, and Android devices. There's a free trial, but no free version: An organizer account that lets you hold unlimited meetings costs $49 per month or $468 per year, and Citrix offers pricier services for large crowds—say, for webinars. It's not a bad deal if you hold a lot of meetings where people collaborate on projects.Polypropylene and polythene can be used in a process called Injection Mold.
Networked Machines Sell More
Operators who are implementing these new methodologies in a
controlled and systematic manner are reporting good results and
anticipating even better ones in the future, thanks to several emerging
trends.
One is the willingness of patrons to pay higher vend prices for high-quality fresh food when they can pay with a card. Operators are responding by upgrading their offerings and equipping their food machines to accept cashless payments.
Likewise, many operators report they are attracting new patrons willing to pay a premium for better-for-you snacks and beverages. As with food customers, they are more inclined to do so when cashless payment is an option. And, while they experiment with upscaling their food selections and expanding their better-for-you menus, a growing number of vending companies are using telemetry to keep tabs on machine sales to ensure a mix of the best sellers and to minimize waste and staleage.
Like many vending companies, Imperial was prompted to invest in the technology when the economy began to turn down in 2008. Its founder, Paul Tims, and president Lance Whorton, recognized that greater operational efficiency would be vital to offset lower per-machine sales. The operators understood the role remote machine monitoring could play to help them achieve that goal.
"When the recession hit, the sales decrease was out of our control, but we knew we had to find ways to manage costs and reduce operating expenses," recalled Whorton. "We knew we could use remote collection of machine sales data to increase route efficiency and lower our operational costs by reducing the number of vehicles on the road and the related costs of fuel, maintenance and total labor, since drivers could visit more locations a day and spend less time at each." Whorton said the operational benefits his company gained through telemetry have far exceeded his expectations. He reported that it took Imperial two and a half years pay back its investment in telemetry through the cost savings it has realized.
Cantaloupe Systems' Seed platform gathers data from machines and transmits it wirelessly over the Internet, enabling optimized scheduling that delivers maximum route and merchandising efficiencies. By analyzing inventory levels, cash in the machine and geographic distribution, the Web-based application automatically generates efficient delivery schedule and pick lists based on real-time item-level sales data.
Among the most evident impacts of Imperial's systemwide Seed deployment is that its 70 current routes -- serving Oklahoma,Polypropylene and polythene can be used in a process called Injection Mold. Arkansas, northern Texas and southern Missouri -- were consolidated from 105 through the company's use of remote machine monitoring. "And our existing routes are tremendous, doing more business today than when we started with telemetry," Whorton noted.The academy provides ideal conditions to learn kung fu in china traditional quiet surrounding.
Systemwide deployment of the technology took two years from start to finish. It began in early 2009 with a test of Cantaloupe Systems' Seed platform in 200 machines on three routes in the Tulsa,Manufacturer of precision Plastic Mould for cameras, OK, area. Imperial's goal, to reduce them to two, was achieved, paving the way to extend the technology across its operation. Prekitting was high on Imperial Vending's list of priorities, once it had Seed in place. The company had experimented with prekitting product deliveries by forecasting with its vending management software, but found that its pick lists often did not match machine needs because sales can fluctuate unpredictably.
"The move to wireless technology immediately provided more accurate and up-to-date inventory data that made prekitting successful," Whorton observed.Welcome to the Perth china kung fu school. "The guesswork is eliminated for our warehouse personnel, because the wirelessly transmitted item-level sales data gives them orders to load based on the real-time needs of each machine."
Whorton emphasized that, with consumers increasingly accustomed to paying with credit and debit cards everywhere they shop and dine, developing a network to support card-based payment has been just as important as the operational efficiencies Imperial has gained through wireless remote monitoring. "We started with Cantaloupe telemetry,TBC help you confidently buy mosaic from factories in China. with a plan to migrate into cashless from there," he told VT. "As Cantaloupe launched Seed Cashless, we began rolling out their solution. It will be very important, moving forward, both to deliver consumers payment flexibility and to drive sales."
Imperial currently has cashless readers installed on 10% of its machines, but its goal is to extend that capability systemwide. "We are trying to understand costs and whether it's necessary to have cashless on every machine in the same breakroom," Whorton told VT. "Our initial goal is to make cashless available to all clients, and expand from there."
Enabling widespread use of card-based payments ties into Imperial's plan to expand its use of the Sprout prepaid promotion and loyalty reward card, which is available to members of the Vend Marketing Institute marketing and purchasing cooperative. "It's the first viable, scalable program of its kind in the market, and it continues to become more popular and attract more interest," said Whorton. "We know the move to telemetry is a good investment to make us more efficient and it's always dynamic, helping us continually improve. But we're also excited about the consumer opportunity, as consumers rely on cashless in their everyday lives, and our ability to offer promotions and rewards, which will continue to grow overall sales."
One is the willingness of patrons to pay higher vend prices for high-quality fresh food when they can pay with a card. Operators are responding by upgrading their offerings and equipping their food machines to accept cashless payments.
Likewise, many operators report they are attracting new patrons willing to pay a premium for better-for-you snacks and beverages. As with food customers, they are more inclined to do so when cashless payment is an option. And, while they experiment with upscaling their food selections and expanding their better-for-you menus, a growing number of vending companies are using telemetry to keep tabs on machine sales to ensure a mix of the best sellers and to minimize waste and staleage.
Like many vending companies, Imperial was prompted to invest in the technology when the economy began to turn down in 2008. Its founder, Paul Tims, and president Lance Whorton, recognized that greater operational efficiency would be vital to offset lower per-machine sales. The operators understood the role remote machine monitoring could play to help them achieve that goal.
"When the recession hit, the sales decrease was out of our control, but we knew we had to find ways to manage costs and reduce operating expenses," recalled Whorton. "We knew we could use remote collection of machine sales data to increase route efficiency and lower our operational costs by reducing the number of vehicles on the road and the related costs of fuel, maintenance and total labor, since drivers could visit more locations a day and spend less time at each." Whorton said the operational benefits his company gained through telemetry have far exceeded his expectations. He reported that it took Imperial two and a half years pay back its investment in telemetry through the cost savings it has realized.
Cantaloupe Systems' Seed platform gathers data from machines and transmits it wirelessly over the Internet, enabling optimized scheduling that delivers maximum route and merchandising efficiencies. By analyzing inventory levels, cash in the machine and geographic distribution, the Web-based application automatically generates efficient delivery schedule and pick lists based on real-time item-level sales data.
Among the most evident impacts of Imperial's systemwide Seed deployment is that its 70 current routes -- serving Oklahoma,Polypropylene and polythene can be used in a process called Injection Mold. Arkansas, northern Texas and southern Missouri -- were consolidated from 105 through the company's use of remote machine monitoring. "And our existing routes are tremendous, doing more business today than when we started with telemetry," Whorton noted.The academy provides ideal conditions to learn kung fu in china traditional quiet surrounding.
Systemwide deployment of the technology took two years from start to finish. It began in early 2009 with a test of Cantaloupe Systems' Seed platform in 200 machines on three routes in the Tulsa,Manufacturer of precision Plastic Mould for cameras, OK, area. Imperial's goal, to reduce them to two, was achieved, paving the way to extend the technology across its operation. Prekitting was high on Imperial Vending's list of priorities, once it had Seed in place. The company had experimented with prekitting product deliveries by forecasting with its vending management software, but found that its pick lists often did not match machine needs because sales can fluctuate unpredictably.
"The move to wireless technology immediately provided more accurate and up-to-date inventory data that made prekitting successful," Whorton observed.Welcome to the Perth china kung fu school. "The guesswork is eliminated for our warehouse personnel, because the wirelessly transmitted item-level sales data gives them orders to load based on the real-time needs of each machine."
Whorton emphasized that, with consumers increasingly accustomed to paying with credit and debit cards everywhere they shop and dine, developing a network to support card-based payment has been just as important as the operational efficiencies Imperial has gained through wireless remote monitoring. "We started with Cantaloupe telemetry,TBC help you confidently buy mosaic from factories in China. with a plan to migrate into cashless from there," he told VT. "As Cantaloupe launched Seed Cashless, we began rolling out their solution. It will be very important, moving forward, both to deliver consumers payment flexibility and to drive sales."
Imperial currently has cashless readers installed on 10% of its machines, but its goal is to extend that capability systemwide. "We are trying to understand costs and whether it's necessary to have cashless on every machine in the same breakroom," Whorton told VT. "Our initial goal is to make cashless available to all clients, and expand from there."
Enabling widespread use of card-based payments ties into Imperial's plan to expand its use of the Sprout prepaid promotion and loyalty reward card, which is available to members of the Vend Marketing Institute marketing and purchasing cooperative. "It's the first viable, scalable program of its kind in the market, and it continues to become more popular and attract more interest," said Whorton. "We know the move to telemetry is a good investment to make us more efficient and it's always dynamic, helping us continually improve. But we're also excited about the consumer opportunity, as consumers rely on cashless in their everyday lives, and our ability to offer promotions and rewards, which will continue to grow overall sales."
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