By Joseph Grove,
contributing writer
This article originally published in Self-Service World magazine, May/Jun 2006.
It's one thing to keep an intelligent device up and running. It's another to use it as a powerful marketing tool, one that can be used to study users, improve the deployer's ability to make decisions, and facilitate the creation of partnerships.
Remote management has been called "intelligent" device management for years now. And it's getting a little more intelligent all the time.
Not only can data be pushed upstream regarding functionality, but so can more interesting facts.
In addition, remote management also can help the kiosk work with other machines employed by different companies, driving cross-selling of goods and services with allies.
"More companies are beginning to realize the untapped potential in the information they can harvest through remote device management," said Anila Jobanputra, president and co-founder of Esprida Corporation. "It's more than knowing what your devices are doing. It's about using that intelligence to generate revenue and transform your business model."
So much information can be collected, says Dr. Peter Honebein, co-author of "Creating Do-It-Yourself Customers," that business owners need to be selective.
"There is a lot of data we can mine, from individual keystrokes to the result of the overall experience," Honebein said.
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| Michigan Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land demonstrates the ease of using the new Self-Service Center to a customer in the Grand Rapids Area SUPER Center. The ATM-style machine lets eligible customers renew their vehicle tabs in seconds, without waiting in line fore service at the counter. |
"But what is important here is that there is a priority to what you collect and analyze, since mining can be expensive. Most businesses have a set of five to seven key metrics that are critical indicators for guiding the business (or in this case, kiosk). If your self-service system is a revenue generator, then obviously sales volume is a critical metric."
The State of Michigan
Tom Weston is a government employee. And like most jobs where the boss of the boss is the man or woman who pulls the lever in November, his is subject to quadrennial revolution.
A candidate for secretary of state — the office in charge of vehicle registrations and several other administrative functions — went to voters with three hard facts and one easy fix: More people needed to renew their vehicle registrations. The people who needed this service live more spread out than ever. And money, as always, was tighter than ever. The fix? Self-service kiosks.
"We had to have this thing running by the month of December (2004)," said Weston, whose official title is e-commerce project manager but who should be called Miracle Maker.
He pulled it off. And now that he's facing the end of the deployment's ramp- up, the mission will go from all-out blitz to precision honing.
Here are a few benefits Weston associates with the remote management component of the kiosks:
1. More efficient placement. Depending on the volume of usage, some machines may get moved to more heavily trafficked areas.
2. Understanding self-service habits of citizens. What demographics are using the kiosks? Weston plans next year to begin examining what types of vehicles are being renewed through them. He admits that information by itself is not an intuitive question to ask, but the answers allow for important inferences: Someone who uses a kiosk to renew the license for a 2005 BMW 7 Series represents a different kind of constituent (read: voter) than the one who drives a '75 Corolla.
3. Understanding how close people cut it to their tag renewal dates.
Weston said the state is developing plans for a self-service application for low-risk parolees, where some probationers could make many of their parole check-ins electronically. Data collection there would be especially important, Weston said, because it will allow probation officers to spend more time with high-risk probationers.
Leveraging usage patterns
Shamira Jaffer, president of Signifi Solutions, presented another application of data harvesting.
A customer who operated a department store learned with help from the remote management reports that 20 percent of its consumers embraced its new kiosk and completed transactions at the machines instead of ordering the traditional way, from staff at the catalog counter. The customer was pleased with the usage.
But Signifi, a company specializing in photo and media kiosks, peeled one more layer from the onion: Its analysis of the data showed that another 20 percent walked away before completing a purchase. The problem? The transaction screen of the interface was too complex to understand and they resorted to the old way of ordering.
"It's something that we would have never known if it weren't for the remote management. And we were able to change that," said Jaffer.
Jaffer also cited the benefit of being able to plan promotions several months in advance, for many machines at once. If she wants all of her photo kiosks to offer a special print package for Valentine's Day, she can set all the parameters ahead of time — from prices, graphics, and the exact time the promotion is available.
This story was excerpted from "Remote Device Management: Improve Uptime and Generate Value with Remote Management Systems," a guide produced jointly by Self-Service World, KioskMarketplace.com and Esprida Corporation.
