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Before now, the success of kiosks was limited by slow personal-computer (PC) performance of kiosks, which did not meet customer requirements. "To be widely adopted, it's important that kiosks respond immediately to the consumer's touch," says Thomas Colleary, national sales manager for interactive services at The Allied Group. "But a PC-based system just doesn't do that. People get frustrated with the slow response time and just walk away."
Workstations are poised to rapidly expand the consumer kiosk market. With full-size, TV-quality digital video, instant response to customer requests, and full networking capabilities, kiosks from The Allied Group have what retailers need. The Allied Group's kiosks offers several key advantages over other kiosk systems:
To grab the attention of people walking by, the kiosks display TV-quality video. "Full-screen, TV-quality video was a very important development criteria," says Walt Hauck, manager of advanced systems at the Allied Group. "Market research clearly indicated that consumer usage and comfort with the technology increased dramatically when TV-quality video is incorporated into the application. The more the screen looks like a TV, the more comfortable the consumer is."
"Many people have commented that the video displayed on the kiosk monitors is better quality than what they get on their televisions," says Jim Remmell, staff engineer at Sun Microsystems. "Allied is currently using VGA (640 by 480 pixel) touch screen monitors attached to the SPARCstations so that the video plays on the full screen. A Sun manager has asked us if we could use a slightly larger screen resolution so that people won't assume that there's just a TV and a VCR inside the kiosk!"
One of the great strengths of the The Allied Group kiosks is the networking capability. Colleary says, "Our superior networking capability lets system operators update merchandise information quickly over the network from the server to every kiosk in the field. Its a far easier solution than requiring store managers or field service people to physically replace the data in every machine." Not only do the network and server make updating data more efficient they also make maintenance easier. The Allied Group's kiosks includes diagnostic software that lets the operator know when printers need paper or malfunctions occur.
The Allied Group's kiosks include a touch screen interface, a Sun SPARCstation, Parallax video, and speakers. To optimize use of capital equipment, several kiosk "heads" (displays) can run off one workstation. The kiosks often include credit card readers and thermal or laser printers to take orders and print receipts and product information.
The Allied Group's kiosks do a lot more than just dispense product information. To maximize use of their investment, retailers can also use kiosks to train employees and give out benefits information. The kiosks can advertise and gather data on consumer interests and demographics. And kiosks can function as a sales clerk, giving product information and printing brochures and coupons, checking availability and prices (through a link to the corporate database), and taking orders on credit cards, printing receipts, and arranging delivery.
"Retailers are beginning to explore the full marketing, promotion, information, education and data-gathering potential of high-performance networked multimedia kiosks," says Bob Delaney, worldwide market development manager, retail and distribution industries at Sun Microsystems. "The functionality and versatility of Allied's system lets a kiosk function almost as another salesperson, providing information and even processing transactions."
The Allied Group is able to quickly develop kiosk systems customized for a particular customer. The Allied Group has already deployed custom kiosk systems at Wal-Mart, OfficeMax, insurance companies, and real estate firms.
For more information, contact The Allied Group at:
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