We’ve met Ksenia Van de Kamp, managing partner of Breakthrough Marketing Solutions, both in the United States and Russia at the round tables on the non-fuel businesses of gas stations.

Since then, we’ve had a lot of hard work on a system for coffee machines remote monitoring – BMS Coffee Control. Adaptation of a breakthrough marketing solution to the Russian realities turned out to be a rather difficult. Ksenia and her team create really “breakthrough marketing solutions” for retail and HoReCa, and I say without hint of irony. And her developments don’t stop at coffee machines monitoring systems only.

Even programmers of our IT department like to put on a modest air. “Is the data transfer from machine to machine a miracle by modern standards?”. Not only they are wrong, they’re saying only half-truth. If it was so easy all microwave ovens, coffee machines and washing machines would have been connected to each other long time ago. But the market is trying to repeat solutions that provide great economic benefit. Yesterday Ksenia sent feedback on the work of our Russian colleagues. She compared the functionality of BMS Coffee Control and one of the Russian products.

“Dear Russian colleagues from “ctrl + coffee” made a step forward, almost repeating the starting IT-solution of BMS dating back to 2010-11. My congratulations!

Of those materials, which were presented by them, I saw a number of fundamental differences of their solution from BMS Coffee Control functionality as of 2015:

1. The authors are positioning their product as a “coffee machines remote control system”, but it is the “remote control” functionality is lacking from their presentation materials. Simple activation of the touch screen using a barcode scanner and a cloud service is not yet its remote control. Remote control is possible only in the mode of two-way communication with a coffee machine that, judging by the description, is not yet implemented.

2. According to the materials submitted, the solution does not exclude coffee drinks cross-picking after activating the touch screen of coffee machines, as barcode scanner simultaneously activates all the buttons of coffee machine’s display.

3. Collection of data about the actions of the coffee machine is a standard factory option from any modern producer. The task of remote monitoring system – an automatic analysis of the coffee machine and delivery of email alerts when critical errors occur with the possibility of remote fixing. These basic functions are implemented in BMS Coffee Control.

4. The solution is presented as an option for coffee machines Thermoplan. How universally applicable it is and suitable for coffee machines from other manufacturers such as BMS Coffee Control?

Conclusion: so far the solution is not a rival for the latest releases of BMS Coffee Control.
In order to approach the level of BMS Coffee Control 2015, you must:
– develop solutions for the real two-way coffee machines monitoring;
– create software for monitoring center for its operators could not only monitor, but also correct the coffee machines work remotely in real time;
– develop a solution to activate coffee machine only one button, activating pouring of a drink, which was purchased by the customer, according to the barcode recieved;
– develop a solution for selling and control of beverages, purchased with regular office passes used in modern business centers.

Good luck!”

In an emergency, you do not go up to the level of your expectations, but will fall to the level of your training! Let’s raise the level of our industry together, dear Russian colleagues.