serviceable for our industry. We worked for about
three years developing a program. But, I should
point out that the program that's appropriate for
me and my management style may not fit in for the
existing system that has evolved for another
operator. In this business, there is no one formula
for success. There are so many variables that you
try to measure in a location's productivity and your
route's productivity. It's very difficult to come up
with a canned formula for success.
PLAY METER: What functions does your data
processing service carry out?
LONDON: The data processing service balances
the cash each week. In essence, it's distributing all
our collections in various pigeonholes which we can
restate in many ways. If we have, let's say, a
collection of one hundred dollars on a jukebox, it
can distribute that money-location's share,
operator's share, taxes, sales tax, ASCAP. All that
money is distributed and balanced by the individual
collection; then it's reported in various ways. Now,
it's reported on our video screen as a location
collection. We produce once a month a report on
type of machine collections. In other words, all the
phonographs of that model will state all of the
collections for that certain period and what we
averaged on those phonographs. That way I can tell
when a machine starts to give me problems, when I
can't keep it on location anymore. I also have to look
at service expenses, too. Also, we're in the process
of installing meters on everything. So the data
processing gives us a comparison to a meter
"When we get to profitability of a particular
machine, we do try to put a weekly service cost to
it ... In other UJords, you have a piece of equipment
and you can find out what is your minimum, what
you must get out of this piece of equipment."
10
reading. It gives us an over and short picture. That
is primarily what it does. It gives me a weekly
report on whether the individual routes are over or
under a thirteen-week average. And how do they
compare to a one-year average. So I can start
watching some trends. We also keep track of
refunds this way. I can watch how much the
collectors are giving away.
PLAY METER: What does this all involve to get it
on a computer?
LONDON: We don't keypunch anymore. We used
to. Our input is done by an on-line terminal, and
every night my radio dispatcher feeds it in via the
terminal directly to the computer. We have an
alpha-numeric keyboard and a video screen. We
don't have a printout right now, just a screen,
though we may go into a printout later on. So far
they have been too expensive, though there's
finally one available at a reasonable price . I can get
one for about $84 a month. It's a slow job, but I can
set that thing up so that it will print all night, and
I'll have all the information in the morning.
PLA Y METER: What does it cost you to run this
computer?
LONDON: About $750 a month. It would take
about three people to produce the information the
computer does , though.
PLA Y METER: Have you noticed any part of your
route declining as opposed to last year's collections?
LONDON: In general business trends, yes, we're
down a little this year. The decline is not
substantial so it's very difficult to pinpoint. It's in
all equipment, music and games. It's probably a
combination of factors, but definitely one factor is
that our marketing area has been hit with a lot of
location buying. That's one portion of the problem,
location selling. It comes in spurts, and the mature
operator can weather these storms because the
proven way to success in the long run is through an
operator and service . It's as close to full potential as
you can get. When the locations buy their own
equipment, they deprecate the value of that
equipment by not maintaining it properly, by not
changing it on a timely basis, hence collections
drop, and quite frequently they are unable to make
payments on the equipment.
PLAY METER: You mentioned something about
service. Do you keep track of the costs that are
involved there?
LONDON: We're radio-dispatched , we have
timecards, and every serviceman has a worksheet.
Each man has got to account for his full time period.
What we do is take the amount of time each man
spends on service at specific locations, and we
apportion it to these routes. That way we can
evaluate the productivity of the route. We know
how much it costs us to maintain the routes, both
collection and service costs. I'm talking here mostly
about labor and automobiles.
PLAY METER: Do you know what your spending
on service-per-machine is?
PLAY METER , June, 1978.