Four questions to ask before you choose your preferred kiosk software provider
When choosing an interactive kiosks software provider you need to take into account your needs today and in the future.
Too often the future is neglected and this can lead to all sorts of technical and commercial problems.
If you have a deal with a provider and they can’t go in the direction you want your business to go in, your business shape is being dictated to or restricted by the provider. But it is a responsibility of the buyer to ensure they understand their needs properly. Some questions to ask yourself are:
- How many kiosks will you be deploying and over what period of time?
- What does your roadmap look like in terms of content and usage?
- Do you want a toolkit or a platform
- What support infrastructure do you have in-house and what do you need from your provider?
Often kiosks are deployed over a period of time which inevitably means that a lot of effort is exerted at the beginning of the project and deployment is ramped-up once the wrinkles have been ironed out and the installation process has been refined.
Content changes over time to reflect customer needs and technology changes. This means that there are several tracks of planning that need to be understood. By necessity, the operating systems that you use may be largely down to compatibility, stability and availability. Customer expectations increase over time as familiarity of a kiosk and what it is can do becomes more clearly understood. – Think about how you use an ATM, plenty of the features are a given and are now considered the norm.
Platforms can provide some advantages over toolkits because they provide a centralised method for managing groups of kiosks autonomously from the operating system they are on – because kiosk platforms can work with many different operating systems. However platforms require more in depth involvement in setting them up initially. It might not be cost effective for smaller networks (e.g. less than 100 units) to be on a platform unless the control required is very important to the operator. Larger networks gain significantly from a platform approach because organisations can standardise.
Supporting larger networks requires business intelligence in order to optimize resources, especially in the field where costs can be significant. Some important attributes include:
- Know where the problems are
- Live status information
- Exception reporting
- Business rules
- Image management
- Change control
- Operating Systems updates & patches
- Engineering information on mobile devices
Genkiosk is a kiosk management platform designed to take over many of the processes that – if multiplied up over larger estates – cannot be done using the toolkit method of managing kiosks on an individual basis.
Genkiosk provides structure in the way content and customer interactions are controlled. If you would like to see it in action feel free to contact the Genkiosk team for a demo..