Turn research into ROI
Making money. Unless you’re a nonprofit organization, it should be the core focus of your business. Revenue — specifically cash — is the lifeblood that enables a business to continue its day-to-day operations. Revenue pays the bills, it keeps the lights on in the warehouse, it buys the raw materials, it pays the employees’ wages and it brings a hefty income to the business owners. Make enough revenue and the investors are happy. Fail to produce revenue and you’re sunk.
That’s why every expenditure, from the wages of the part-time janitor to the purchase of a new office facility, should contribute to the goal of turning a profit. If a particular investment somehow fails in this regard, it should be halted, eliminated and never, ever repeated.
The same holds true for a company’s decision to purchase and deploy self-service kiosks. Kiosks represent an enormous opportunity for companies. They enable the customer to purchase your product or service in a manner that is quick, convenient and simple. They facilitate a user-friendly transaction that can reach customers who might not feel like standing in a check-out line to purchase your product.
That is, assuming your kiosks are deployed correctly.
You see, a lucrative kiosk deployment is not the sort of thing that happens by accident. You can’t just stumble into it. The corporate landscape is littered with the cracked and mossy tombstones of failed kiosk deployments. Some were terrible ideas to begin with, but most, tragically, started out with great promise.
So why did they fail to make money?
There are a number of reasons. Sometimes, the deployer has failed to properly identify the targeted customer. It may have tried to sell tickets to a rock concert in a kiosk targeting senior citizens. In other instances, the kiosk’s location might have been a detriment, such as when it was hidden a remote corner of a store. Bad signage may be another factor. If your customers don’t even know the kiosk is there, they certainly aren’t going to use it.
The purpose of this report is to help you, the savvy business owner, avoid these pitfalls. After digesting and implementing the steps outlined in the following pages, you’ll be able to maximize the ROI generated through your kiosks by cutting unnecessary costs and by expanding your income. Think of it as your lifeline — your survival guide for navigating the unpredictable world of kiosk deployment.
This guide would not have been possible without the valuable support of MEI. As a respected manufacturer of cash acceptors, MEI holds the largest installed base of unattended payment systems, handling more than one billion transactions per week in 90 countries. The first electronic coin acceptors were developed by MEI in the 1960s, and subsequently the company created the world’s first optically based bill acceptor. Its kiosk payment systems’ technology has earned the best performance rating in the market.
The same technical expertise and business savvy that made MEI an industry leader enriches this guide.
As Alec Shekhar, MEI’s Americas marketing manager, puts it, “Self-service kiosks are a relatively new development in the marketplace. The market is still wide open. Opportunities abound for progressive companies to tap into customer demand for speed and convenience. But there are guidelines. An auto manufacturer wouldn’t launch a new car without first doing research to discover the dos and don’ts of the market. Likewise, kiosk deployers should do their homework to find out what works and what doesn’t.”
Spoken like a true survivor.
Travis Kircher, contributing writer
KioskMarketplace.com 
