Every trade show season, telemetry providers bring something new. Lately it often carries the label “artificial intelligence”.
I understand the appeal. A new feature looks good in a demo.
What happens after the contract is signed gets less attention. Management chooses the platform. The dispatcher, the warehouse team and the fillers have to work with it every day. If a feature is too slow or too cumbersome, they go back to Excel and the phone. When operators ask me how to find the right platform, I suggest a test: give the system to your dispatcher for one ordinary Tuesday and watch.
Where the margin gets lost
Operators fight for revenue with loyalty promotions and sales analysis, and put weeks of work into a tender. Then part of the margin disappears at the petrol station. In September 2026, the most expensive month for fuel so far according to ADAC, diesel in Germany cost an average of 2.39 euros per litre [1]. That is almost double the 2019 annual average [2]. In 2025, an hour of work in transport and storage cost employers 23 percent more than in 2020 [3]. How many kilometres and working hours each route takes, on the other hand, is in the operator’s own hands every morning.
What Route Planning Pro changes
Vendon Cloud has had route planning for years. But to this day, someone still has to put the routes together by hand every day.
Ulli Engel of Engeltec, our sales partner for the DACH region, has his own test: “I often ask operators who plans their routes, and almost always I hear a first name. Usually it’s the boss or someone who has done it for years. Then I ask what happens when that person is on holiday for two weeks. Most of them just laugh.”
From November 2026, Route Planning Pro is set to take over this work:
- The dispatcher sets the rules once: when a machine is due, which machines come first, site opening hours, how long service takes at each machine, and each filler’s working hours, start point and end point.
- The evening before or early in the morning, Vendon Cloud checks which machines are due and builds routes from them with the least possible driving time and distance. The system takes historical traffic data into account.
- Each route comes with a pick list per machine for pre-kitting, and fillers see their route stop by stop in the Vendon app.
- The system flags machines that no longer fit into any route and gives the reason. The dispatcher decides what happens to them.
In spring we visited Hensing GmbH in Emsdetten, whose story has also appeared here in Vending Report. Managing Director Dirk Hensing told us: “By reorganising our delivery routes, we were able to service more machines with the same resources, work more efficiently and reduce the staff needed per route.” That is exactly what route planning and pre-kitting are for.
What Route Planning Pro can’t do yet
Setup takes time and needs someone who knows the machine fleet and the routes well. We tell our customers that up front. Route Planning Pro also doesn’t check what fits in the vehicle, and it doesn’t re-plan while the filler is out on the route.
Would you like to see Route Planning Pro with your routes? Talk to Engeltec Automatensysteme, Vendon’s sales partner for the DACH region.
