Article

Day one of KiosksEurope 2003 shares successes

The first sessions of the forum found experts talking about their country's markets and the areas that have potential for kiosks.

November 23, 2003

Editor's note: This is the second in a series of articles covering KiosksEurope 2003. Steve Warner is customer relations manager for Working Solutions. Working Solutions, which has been in business for 11 years, specializes in the human-machine interface.

DUBLIN, Ireland -- Day one of the KiosksEurope 2003 forum last week found self-service experts talking about their country's markets and the areas that have the most potential for kiosk technology.

The event opened with a keynote presentation from John Purcell of Purcell Associates. He presented an overview of the European self-service kiosk market. His first comments really placed in to perspective the European market and its differences from the U.S. industry; with limited economies of scale available and very niche verticals existing, it is clear that Europe presents a different challenge to the kiosk industry. See related story, "KiosksEurope offers 'can't-miss' sessions."

Purcell proceeded to look at the present and future for Europe. In discussing the present, he brought up such issues as:

Consolidation in the market

Fewer manufacturers

Fewer software developers

Fewer professional service providers

Increase in value-added services

Growth of partnerships between tier-1 suppliers and specialists

Fewer people only doing kiosks

He then looked at the future of Europe and how the kiosk business will develop. Points he shared include:

Growth in the number of deployers who define the business case in advance

Deployers becoming more open to spending on feasibility studies before plunging forward

Kiosks being a boardroom topic. They are no longer the preserve of IT departments

Deployers will stop trying to re-invent the wheel

No more dot-com models

Hot and not

Purcell listed several "hot kiosk project areas" that are active in Europe, including digital retail, sale of digital services like pre-paid top ups, micro-payments, loyalty promotions, non-cash financial services, Wi-Fi public transaction terminals, hospitality bedside terminals, through-glass systems, and digital signage with kiosk interaction.

On the other hand, areas that are not hot include pay-per-use Internet/e-mail access, retail information screens, product demo kiosks, and generally any device that doesn't engage, transact, entertain or inform users.

Public display

Following Purcell were two presentations from the public sector, with Gary Hawthorne and Tom Downham-Clarke of the Greater Manchester Passenger Transport Executive, and Ralf Armbruster of the City of Stuttgart looking at their own individual projects to provide information to the public.

The Greater Manchester Public Transport Executive project has seen a current total of 32 units deployed, which have had more than 600,000 hits combined in the last 12 months.

The ROI is clear when looking at inquiry handling, according to the presentation. The cost of answering a question is around 50p at the call center and 8p to 12p at the kiosk. The shift in information provision was from 16,000 calls average to 12,000 call average, generating major cost savings, the speaker said.

The Manchester network was deployed in six months, a major feat and one that enabled the units to be used by people from all over the world during the Commonwealth Games.

As a public body there is no initial commercial model for the kiosks, but this is being considered as the units prove themselves valuable "virtual" real estate. The main driver is to provide information to the users of Manchester's Transport system. The units are also a key part of the system in ensuring that they can reach as many people as possible, but the deployment also needs to ensure that all information on all channels, paper, Internet, call center and kiosk are consistent

The e-government project of the City of Stuttgart involved the city using kiosks to bridge the digital divide for the 42 percent of the population that has no Internet access.

The units are deployed within the district halls as an alternative to waiting in line for information from the service desk. The kiosks have a keyboard and trackball interface and present an Internet-style interface of information. Each kiosk presents personalized information for that district and features local information first, followed by city and then general information.

The use of the Internet-style interface allows the City of Stuttgart to use a single database to service all channels. The units also feature a printer and allow people to print out selected information such as forms. Future plans see the kiosks being deployed in other locations, such as community centers, hospitals and nursing homes to bring e-government to all.

Countries take stage

A separate panel discussion on the first day of the show explored the UK and Irish markets. Purcell moderated the panel, with featured the views of vendors and deployers. The panel had Dr. Matthew Wood of KAL, Andy Green of BT Multimedia and Jason Williams of Alphyra.

They covered the role and future of informational kiosks, the impact of mobile phone top-ups, the impact of over-optimism on payback and how the market is realizing its mistakes in overconfidence regarding ROI.

They also looked at how experience in the market is dropping development times and launching products faster to the market, the ATM-kiosk convergence and the use of force migration of customers to ensure success. The message seemed to be that there are limited killer applications in the UK and Irish markets, but that kiosks can fulfill basic needs within the market.

This was followed by a look at the multimedia and pay-per-use Internet markets, with three of the largest names in this market: BT Multimedia (United Kingdom), Eircom (Ireland) and Telefonica (Spain). With huge estates, these operators are in a strong position to drive the installation and public acceptance of self-service technology. The main thread of this panel was that Web phones are a vital resource to operators in revitalizing their networks, and that incremental revenue from the digital services can make deployment worthwhile.

The speakers noted that with pay-per-Internet access and e-mail in usage decline, there is a need to use the kiosks to drive incremental revenues through such digital media as ring tones and downloadable logos.

They also mentioned that marketing budgets could be tapped to promote services such as DSL or ADSL for home users. Telefonica's representative talked about how it originally installed Internet-only units, but when response was poor, it moved to Web phones and allowed digital services to drive/provide incremental revenue.

Opportunities ahead

The regional overviews continued with Charles Porter of Euro Kiosk Network covering Spain. One of the most striking statistics he shared was that about 20 percent of the population has access to the Internet, which presents a real opportunity for kiosks in delivering services to the wider community.

Recent developments in the Spanish market include Web phones, e-government roll-outs on a regional basis, promotional kiosks, Internet and e-mail units, gaming and gambling models, and ticketing machines.

The Spanish market is dominated by two or three big players, but as consumer acceptance grows so does the opportunities for specialists to enter the market, Porter said.

Porter was followed by a panel discussion on mainland Europe. The panel for this was huge and featured speakers who have been involved in the kiosk industry for a long time: Con Vass of NCR, Werner Boess of H82 Medientechnik (Austria), Eckhard Reimann of ECRM (Germany), Ralf Armbruster of the City of Stuttgart (Germany), consultant Stephan Herron of Belgium, and Bjorge Stavik of City of Oslo, Norway.

Issues tackled by this panel include e-government trails in Germany, kiosk credibility, the retail market and its successes (such as Kaufhof and the Metro Future Store) and winning applications such as HR and airline check-in, full-service ATMs, and public Internet access.

The panel said the fastest-growing sectors in their countries include e-government, retailing, financial services, human resources, gaming, lottery and Wi-Fi hotspots.

The first day wrapped up with a look at the application-specific world of gaming and gambling. This was presented by Marco de La Rie of Gamingandgambling.com and kingamusements.com. With legislative environments playing a major role in the success of kiosk projects involving gaming and gambling, he said there is need for local partners on the ground to make it successful.