The days of struggling to insert a crinkled dollar bill into a vending machine and watching your precious bag of Cheetos get stuck on the way down may be over, thanks to smarter high-tech vending technology developed by SAP Hana.
The new solution allows consumers to scan a smartphone on a vending-machine sensor, which will activate a touchscreen interface with purchase options. If the consumer has the SAP Hana app installed on his or her smartphone, the cloud menu can recognize the user and will eventually build a user profile based on purchase history. Consumers can select promotional offers and give feedback on their purchases. Gifts can be sent between app users, who will be informed via text of their gift credit.
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SAP Hana has partnered with Venders Exchange to bring the new vending machines to the market. Christian Busch, a senior technology innovation leader at SAP Labs, demoed how to use the digital vending machines at a TechCrunch Disrupt technology conference in California earlier this month. (You can watch it here.)
"So the vending machine has a smartphone inside so we transmit every single transaction to the cloud and then we can run analytics," Busch explained at the conference. "For example, to replenish the machines, we measure the inventory, and if the machine is close to being empty, we send a truck to fill it up."
Through an algorithm, SAP Hana has developed predictive analytics for vending companies. Vendors will be able to track the transaction records of customers allowing data collection that was not possible before.
For more, check out the video above, and read about the coffee machines that dispense beverages when people yawn in front of their their machines.
Image: Josep Lago/AFP/Getty Images