The Senovo Designs Configurator – By Ian Reynolds-Young
When one of your customers shows interest in installing a coffee station, what’s your first reaction? Do you force a smile and say, ‘certainly’?
I wouldn’t blame you if you did, because your customer doesn’t know it, but they just asked you to embark on a journey that’s going to involve you jumping through numerous hoops…
First, you’ve got to find a supplier and brief them. They go away and come up with a design and more often than not, it isn’t quite what you want. You ask them to make adjustments, which leads to time-consuming to-ing and fro-ing, while you’re fielding calls from your customer who wants to know how you’re getting on with their coffee station. Finally, you get a design that you’re happy to present, so you say, ‘ok, can you come back to me with a price and a lead time?’ That’s another two or three days of watching your inbox.
Hopefully, it’s all acceptable and you secure the deal, Hopefully…
The people at Senevo Designs – who have years of experience in coffee, the design and fitting of coffee shops, coffee stations and micro markets – realised that the whole process would benefit from being streamlined. Years of R&D and a serious amount of investment later, they came up with a unique approach to the creation of coffee stations. It’s an easy-to-use, online coffee station configurator.
And when I say ‘easy to use’, it sailed through the ‘me test’. In just a few minutes – admittedly with Clive Marsh, the Senevo Designs MD on the end of a What’sApp chat – I had specified a coffee station and got a price for it. And I promise you, me and technology are not usually comfortable bedfellows.
‘Our online configurator eliminates the hassle that’s traditionally over-complicated the process of designing a coffee station’, Clive says. ‘You can configure it right in front of your customer and (with a little help from AI), you can sit a specific coffee machine on it. If, for instance, you’re planning to use a Coffetek Vitro, no problem. Lots of innovations in coffee and vending are described as ‘game changing’, but our online configurator is a world first.
And by the way, we’re not just talking about dimensions and colours. The coffee station configurator allows you to place waste flaps, condiment units, bins and cup dispensers and instantly see them incorporated into the image. You can even upload a graphic – maybe your customer’s logo – and feature it on any panel you like… What’s more, you can virtually place it in the space in your customer’s premises that’s been earmarked for the installation.
To go as far as getting a price, you’ll be prompted to open a trade account.
‘It’s a revolutionary resource and I’m proud to say it was developed entirely in-house’ Clive says. ‘It’s totally our product. Yes, it took us a long time and a lot of money to do it, but we got there. It’s now being used every day across the UK and it’s been incredibly well-received.’
You can get your hands on the Senovo Designs configurator and put it through its paces here, but I’d suggest that, if you’re interested, you make a point of visiting Clive and his team at Vendex North, Stand 157. The fact is, there’s the whole story of manufacturing speed and quality that I haven’t even touched on in this article and Clive will be delighted to give you the low-down. You’ll also discover that there’s a whole lot more to Senevo Designs than just coffee stations.
View Planet Vending’s Spotlight on Vendex North here.
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