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Self-Serve Technology in 2008

A White Paper 

© 2008 by

David E. Y. Sarna 

Hendon, Stamford Hill & Co.

Introduction

Self-serve public access stations (also known as kiosks) are now ubiquitous at checkout counters in supermarkets like PathMark, in retailers like Home Depot, at check-in counters in airports (for virtually all airlines) and to implement a host of other applications. Properly implemented, self-serve technology benefits the public and companys’ employees,  and helps the bottom line. The Automatic Teller Machine, universally known as an ATM is the most successful application of self-serve technology. First  deployed by First National City Bank (now Citi) in 1960 it was then called a Bankograph. It was installed in several branch lobbies and was used for customers to pay utility bills and get a receipt without a teller. In 1967 a Barclays Bank branch near London showed the first cash dispenser, made by De La Rue Instruments. Since then, self-serve technology has “arrived” and has become an accepted fact of life. In locations like airports, it’s hard to imagine what life was like without them.

I was a pioneer in the kiosk business, and I have all the arrows in my back to prove the point

Back in early 1996, ObjectSoft Corp., a company that I had founded in 1990 got into the kiosk business in a serious way. Much of what we tried to do back then was being done for the first time, and the technology was not yet there. Think back to the days when public touch screens were still a rarity, the Internet was still very expensive (the cable companies had not yet entered the business, and DSL lines were not widely available, slow, expensive, and cantankerous). There were a host of technology challenges.