News

Case study: Reach out and touch your kiosks

January 25, 2006

This article appeared in the Retail Self-Service Executive Summary, Winter 2006.

As one of the communication giants of the northern hemisphere, Bell Canada has a lot of digital touchpoints. One wing of its business is public-access terminals, which covers traditional pay phones as well as new offerings like Internet kiosks.

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According to Damani Best, director of product development and system administration for Bell Canada's public-access group, the company has about 150 Internet kiosks in the field. From a maintenance standpoint, regular in-per- son checkups would not only be a logistical nightmare, they'd be far too expensive. And that's where remote management tools come in.

"Our main purpose is to monitor the terminal status, and troubleshoot, do alarm analysis," he said. "We have terminals spread out a number of different places, so we do a lot of analysis prior to sending out a tech." Best said the software not only alerts him when something is malfunctioning, it provides preventative monitoring notices like how full cash drawers are and which supplies are running low.

Robert Giblett, vice president of North America sales and marketing for KING Products & Solutions - which makes the software Bell Canada uses for remote management of its Internet kiosks - said that the long-distance approach to monitoring and maintenance makes sense for a variety of reasons. In addition to the cost savings over regularly scheduled in-person checks, content on the kiosk can be modified remotely.

Also, supervisors can get an at-a-glance look at all of the machines in the network, rather than just one machine at a time. System administrators can set up a hierarchy of users - for instance, some users might be able to modify content, while others can check sales figures, while others can be designated as super-users.

Plus, there's ease of use: All of these changes can be done through a Web browser interface, accessible from any Internet-connected computer in the world.

"I liken remote management to the vascular system," said Lief Larson, founder of Kiosk magazine and director of research for Valhalla Worldwide LLC. "Remote management is to administration what the brain is to the body, with the kiosk being the heart, and the communications band similar to the veins and arteries. We all want to ensure trouble-free kiosk operation and the remote management sys- tem is how we exercise and feed the network."

Larson said that today's kiosk net- works are amazing business tools, something only dreamt of 10 years ago. They enable businesses to carry out transactions in a distributed environment at a fraction of the cost of using human beings to do their work. Remote management tools represent the glue that holds this web together.

"I personally feel that the most important gain of remote management is the ability to efficiently and effectively improve the kiosk on a continual basis," Larson said. "Remote management is no longer about software and hard- ware diagnostics, but is more about user diagnostics and building the self-service program to meet the ever- changing needs of the customer."