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FUTU R E
O F VE N D I N G
What skills will defi ne tomorrow's vending leaders?
Elliot Maras, Editor
As new tools make automatic merchandising more professional, operators will need to be grounded in more management skills than they have in the past.
W
ith vending becoming more professional thanks to the adoption of cashless
transaction capability, wireless remote machine monitoring and other tools, the next generation of vending operators will likely have a different skill set than their pre- decessors. For operators to succeed in a market where more technology investment and training are needed, where will the next generation of operators come from? What types of education and career background will harvest the next generation of vending industry leaders? The question was recently put
to a randomly selected group of vending industry veterans. Most are optimistic that today's new tools are improving the public's image of their industry, a trend they expect will continue. Operators agree that technology
will play a bigger role. Because of this, they need the fi nancial skills to manage their capital, communica- tion skills to educate employees and customers about the technology, and marketing skills to survive and pros- per in a more competitive market. Operators generally believe that
future vending leaders will have more fi nancial expertise, stronger marketing backgrounds and keener communication skills than previ- ous generations.
10 Future vending leaders will have to be better grounded in several disciplines.
Operators also agreed there is no single type of education or career background that will dominate the next generation of leading operators. In this regard, the operators of the future will mimic their predecessors, having varied business and educa- tion backgrounds. The key characteristics for future leadership in some ways are similar to those of previous generations: good
Automatic Merchandiser VendingMarketWatch.com April 2012
business sense, the ability to delegate responsibilities, knowing how to identify good talent, being willing to reward employees fairly, and a com- mitment to high quality service. While many of these character-
istics remain constant, operators also agree that the need to under- stand new technology is one of the biggest differences that future
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