Category: office vending machine

Working Late and Need Supplies? A Vending Machine Comes to the Rescue

Posted on by John Van Horn

If your company has a policy of locking up the office supplies after hours, it can cause a problem for those employees who are working late at night. The last thing an employee wants to see is a locked door to the supply closet when he or she needs to quickly burn some important data to a DVD or copy files to a flash drive to take on the next day’s business trip.

Rather than forcing your employees to leave the premises and try to find an office supply store that is still open at night, you can set up a supply vending machine that will provide them with the items they need, 24/7. If an employee accidentally spills coffee on a keyboard during a late-night session, for example, it’s easy to get a replacement from the vending machine and then get back to work.

You’ll have the peace of mind that comes from complete office supply control and knowing that your employees won’t be tempted to make off with valuable supplies when no one is around to supervise them. At Intelligent Dispensing Solutions, we provide customized vending machine solutions to help companies dispense office supplies to their employees without having to manually keep tabs on each item they request.

Because the machines accept worker ID numbers, your employees will know that management has full office supply control and can see exactly who is obtaining items from the 24/7 vending machine, which will keep them accountable and reduce waste.

Evolving Workplaces

Posted on by John Van Horn

The supplies needed to run an office at most businesses are constantly changing and evolving. Most businesses now rely on supplies such as computers, keyboards, cell phones and power cables to operate instead of the traditional pens, paper and staplers. Office work stations and desks have changed to accommodate the latest trends in office supplies as well.

With desks and work stations now including less storage space and employees expected to be mobile and agile, there is not enough room to store the supplies they need for their daily operations; especially if it is something valuable like a phone charger or new wireless headset. These items are essential to employee production every day but most businesses won’t issue every employee two headsets or power cables “just in case.” The space to store them and their value are too high. Intelligent Dispensing Solutions utilizes office supply vending machine solutions to keep valuable items in a safe and secure location that is easily stocked, organized and accessible to any employee.

Custom Vending Machines Creating Organization

Posted on by John Van Horn

Intelligent Dispensing Solutions‘ office vending machine is the perfect way to start organizing your office supplies and keep the safely and securely organized. With this focus on organization, there are a few tips that help improve workplace organization for employees that carry over to the benefits of a custom vending machine for your office supply storage. Here are our top tips for keeping office supplies organized with a vending machine!

A place for everything, and everything in its place is one of the founding principles of organization. Whether it is for organizing ideas, files or office supplies, being able to properly store things and find them again easily and efficiently is a key part of being organized. With the Office Supply System from IDS there is a place for everything in the vending machine and once they are in there they will stay neatly arranged and easy to find with their vertical and face-out arrangement.

Simplify! Making everything as easy as possible will increase the likelihood that you do the positive things you need to in order to stay organized. Swiping an ID card or entering a PIN to procure the office supplies you need removes much of the hassle from trying to securely store and dispense valuable items.

Secure Office Vending Machines

Posted on by John Van Horn

The office supplies that most businesses use every day have evolved dramatically over the past few years. While not that long ago, pens, pencils and notepads were crucial to employees’ abilities to get work done, now keyboards, mice and phone chargers have become the critical lineup of office necessities.

While all of these items will help employees stay productive, tech items such as computer mice and phone chargers are a little harder to just store in a closet for many reasons. Intelligent Dispensing Solutions realizes that irregularly-shaped items, computer accessories with long cords and fragile items are difficult to store and keep organized. Many of these office items require extra security due to their high value.

Secure supply vending machines offer the perfect solution for securely storing your items and making sure that they stay organized after they are stocked in the machine. Office Supply Systems from IDS offer a variety of ways to access the items in the machine while keeping them secure, including PIN numbers, bar codes, mag stripes, PROX card or other point of use ID systems. All the data is encrypted and no data is stored to ensure security.

Satellite Storage Solutions

Posted on by John Van Horn

While looking at the Intelligent Dispensing Solutions website, you probably noticed our Office Supply Systems and might have thought, “That looks great, but my workplace uses items that won’t fit in a vending machine.” No need to worry, IDS has you covered!

If your business requires employees to use equipment that would be too large to fit into a vending machine on a daily or weekly basis, IDS offers solutions to expand your inventory management. Satellite systems connect to your main units and allow you to dispense large packaged or irregularly shaped objects. These satellite system storage solution office supply vending machine functions like lockers with glass fronts that are opened by the ID or card mechanism that you would normally use to dispense an item from your main unit. A benefit to these satellite systems is that the locked doors can be reopened and items can be put back in if you are in need of safe and secure places to store items when not in use by employees.

These machines are perfect for retailers, hospitals or other locations with medical supplies, gyms and more!

Smart Vending Software

Posted on by John Van Horn

A great vending machine will have more inside than just products to dispense. As a vending machine manufacturer that is constantly working to deliver creative and innovative solutions in various industries, Intelligent Dispensing Solutions knows that the parts and software that run a smart vending machine determine how successful the machine will be.

To ensure that your Office Supply System from IDS functions properly and gives you the tools you need to monitor your machine, we have developed IQ Technology. This software allows your machine to provide benefits to both machine operators and machine patrons; making it easier to manage the machine and inventory and to customize vending experiences for customers.

Our IQ Smart Vending Machine Software is able to offer complete transaction security whether you use a PIN code, bar code, mag stripe, PROX card or other ID systems by encrypting data and not storing security information. The web-based interface of this software creates an efficient way to manage multiple machines from any location and also includes mobile tracking and alerts to stay informed on any issues that may arise with your machines. IQ Software also includes guaranteed delivery verification sensors that will ensure a successful dispensing for every transaction.

The Greek Importance of Supply Dispensing

Posted on by John Van Horn

We tend to think of vending machines as modern conveniences, not historical inventions. They are our allies during an all-nighter or a convenient way to treat our sweet tooth at work or school. Custom vending machines are important for more than that, though, and have been for longer than you think.

The world’s first vending machine was actually designed by prolific inventor Hero of Alexandria, around the first century CE. A person put a coin in a slot at the top of a box. The coin hit a metal lever, like a balance beam, and on the other end of the beam was a string tied to a plug on a container of liquid. As the beam tilted from the weight of the coin, the string lifted the plug and dispensed the desired drink until the coin dropped off the beam. It wasn’t just a thirst quencher, though. Hero’s apparatus was designed to stop temple-goers from taking more Holy Water than they paid for.

Inventory shrinkage is still a problem today, and IDS’ vending machine manufacturers can design a custom vending machine to deal with whatever supplies you want to protect. Whether your inventory is reduced due to stealing, overuse of materials or simply a perceived lack of inventory value, a dispensing solution can put an immediate dent in the problem — in some cases reducing the shrinkage by as much as ninety percent.

However, the real advance in inventory management is achieved because of the machines’ access methods. Each machine can be configured to accept a code, a card or a fingerprint unique to one individual. That allows a manager to determine how often the machine may be accessed and whether inventory must be returned before new products can be dispensed.

Vending Medical Supplies for Savings and Safety

Posted on by John Van Horn

Separating the business of health care from health care itself is sometimes a little harder than we would like it to be. We would like to think of the resources as endless and priceless. We would assume our safety is not simply an issue of punching a clock. Of course, for the hands-on people working in a medical office or other kind of health clinic, that is probably the case. No one got into this business to make a killing.

That said, supplies remain important and the office’s ability to administer care can be negatively affected by any unnecessary “breakage” or unexpected loss of medical supplies. This is why an office vending machine loaded with rubber gloves, gauze, and a variety of other necessary medical supplies can actually help with overhead and day-to-day operations in equal measure.

A custom vending machine is a full medical supply inventory management solution that will assure the institution’s medical supplies are readily available at all times. It will also assure that a wrong move in a supply closet does not result in the contamination of large swaths of medical supplies. Safety is a boon for medical workers and those in management alike–one less stressful variable in a stressful environment.

Should the Office’s Custom Vending Machine Include Post-Its?

Posted on by John Van Horn

The importance of memos and Post-It Notes in the digital age, for some, has seemed to wain. Still, it is likely worth stocking them in the nearby office vending machine. It is not because digital reminders and automated updates available through most email services are not helpful. It is because sometimes they simply are not enough.

Everyone receives update reminders, but occasionally that fifteen minute meeting warning will come and go, and it will appear to offer you the opportunity to squeeze in one or two more small tasks. In other scenarios, it seems to offer an invitation for a little brain-numbing trip around the Internet. In either case, the distraction can ruin your perception of time and lead to embarrassing lateness. This is where the ever-present physical reminder of a “sticky note” can help.

It might seem silly, a business skipping the small cost of placing Post-It Sticky Notes in their vending machine, but in this day and age, every company is trying to manage costs any way they can. The office vending machines you employed to help manage your supplies budget can offer a helpful hand, but they should not be an excuse to skip out on certain supplies all together.