Article

Lessons from Europe: apps are king

Details of deployments from retail to health insurance closed out the final day of KioskEurope 2003.

December 16, 2003

Editor's note: This is the fourth and final story in a series of articles covering KiosksEurope 2003. 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 -- The last day of KiosksEurope 2003 dawned, and with the finishing post in sight and thoughts turning to travel plans, the speakers would need to be on top of their games. That turned out to be the case.

First up was Nikos Geropanagiotis of Mecca neue Medien, who spoke about his company's deployment of kiosks for the MediaMarkt chain of stores in Germany and soon Italy. The MediaMarkt Company is Europe's largest retailer of consumer electronics, with over 290 megastores in 10 countries. The presentation looked at two kiosk projects done for the retailer.

The first was for the sale of game software in-store and provided a central point for customers to find the top 10 titles. Customers could access the units and view short video clips, pack shots and game descriptions.

The most-viewed category was the coming attractions for new games. There were more than 300 kiosk deployed throughout the MediaMarkt group for this application. However, following a school shooting incident in Germany, a new law was passed regarding the display of rated material in public. This effectively led to the switching off of 300 kiosks overnight.

The next kiosk project is a unit to direct customers to the correct printer cartridge for their needs. This involves a touchscreen mounted within the area holding the cartridges.

The system is supported/financed by the printer manufacturers to drive people to branded cartridges and ensure higher sales. The average time for a consumer trying to find a cartridge is 2 minutes and 30 seconds. But staff at the store uses the kiosk system to complete the transaction and hand the customer the cartridge within 30 seconds. This has a major impact on the stores operation.

The principle message from Geropanagiotis is to keep kiosk projects simple and do everything possible to reduce complexity. This benefits the customers/deployers and the end users by ensuring the kiosk can fulfil demands as quickly as possible.

He also stressed the need to get all stakeholders buying into the project, including in-store staff and employees, management at the board and store levels, and customers through education and promotion. He then gave a few rules for success:

Visualize any complexity, and have a clear understanding of the project.
• Select the right people.
• Be flexible, but establish standards.
• Never start a roll out without a beta test.
• Document everything.
• Communicate.

Beyond retail

Bjorge Stavik of the city of Oslo reminded the crowd that kiosk technology has much wider applications that just retail or financial, and can provide benefits in a range of applications. His project in the mapping and planning department of Oslo, uses kiosk technology to allow customers access to a large-scale map of Oslo.

Using overhead scanning and projection technology visitors can access information on the map and view places of interest.

Martina Zorka of the Health Insurance Institute of Slovenia introduced us to a 295-unit kiosk project that involves distributing 1.9 mill smart cards to the public and 18,000 cards to health professionals.

These cards are the only applicable document to access healthcare insurance rights in Slovenia. The data on the card is updated every time the healthcare insurance is used. However the data on the card must not be less then three months old. It is here that kiosks come into use as they provide the ability to update card information.

The project has logged 55 million updating transactions. As well as updating the health insurance data, the kiosk can also be used to order a convention form. More than 300,000 forms have been ordered via the kiosks. This shows the acceptance that these units have gained by the general public. The units also provide access to 380 pages of data on the healthcare sector in Slovenia, Zorka said.

By September 2003, the system had only seen 135 errors -- all of which were local (not main system) and the most common of these was a blocked card reader.

Overall, the project has delivered two levels of benefits: direct benefits including savings in time and labor, reliable identification of patients and manageability of healthcare; and indirect benefits such as a rise in general computer literacy, and the establishment of an infrastructure for additional delivery of information

While you're away

Joris van Dijk updated attendees on the Satellite Newspapers Worldwide kiosk. The kiosks are the first self-contained, interactive, fully automated newspaper-vending kiosk in the world.

The earliest perceived target was business travelers, and locations were chosen to touch these people. However, research found that people wanted local (home) news after three days on the road. Business travellers often only stayed in one location for one to two days and so were not the best customers of this service. Leisure travellers were much more open to purchasing their home newspapers while away. This has lead to a change in the target locations of the units.

Jason Williams of Alphyra closed the program with a study of the mobile phone top-up market in Europe, calling it a "hot-bed of activity." Alphyra has more than 500 million transactions and is active across eight countries.

An average of 60 percent of Europe's mobile markets have pre-paid needs, in a market of 125 million subscribers. When dealing with the e-top up market, Williams said vendors need to account for the three principles involved and their needs, including operators, merchant/location owners, and users/customers.

These principles all have their own drivers, which need to be met by self-service kiosks. For example, in Spain and Portugal 80 percent to 90 percent of mobile top-ups are done on ATMs, while in other markets it is 5 percent to 7 percent, despite the best efforts to promote the value-added service.

Williams said self-service terminals present a real opportunity to the e-top up markets and will see an increasing activity in this market as a way of providing quick access to the service for customers, moving transaction away from the counter for the merchant and increasing customer "touch" for the operators.

As a service, mobile top-ups incorporate the real benefits of kiosks to so many industries and could be one of the new "killer applications" for kiosks.