Tis the season to plan your next kiosk project

Well, it has been a busy December. Our firm has been cranking out proposals for kiosks and digital signage like mad men! This is the time of year when many corporations need to either spend money by the end of the year, or they are taking the slow time at the holidays to start planning initiatives for 2008. Often, the planning and fact finding is done at this time of year, to prepare for budgeting season that is often in the March time frame. Budgeting is proposed internally, and then approved by the end of the corporate calendar year which is often June. That money is then part of the following corporate calendar year's budget. Development on these projects may not start in earnest until the summer or fall of next year.

This is an annual exercise for firms like Electronic Art and my competitors. We are all cranking out proposals, responding to RFP's, and letting everything else get pushed back while we attempt to land this new business. It can be frustrating, but this is when many projects are born, and this groundwork can make it possible to land that project in the late spring. There is often a long sales cycle in regards to these projects. It can be frustrating for the "new business development" staff, but accepted.

If you are looking for firms to bid on a kiosk or digital signage project, take a look at your needs. Think about what "pain" you are trying to solve, and do a good job of outlining what you want from the vendor. If what you need is an off the shelf solution, start comparing apples to apples. If your needs are custom or you want it custom built so you "own it" and don't have to pay licensing... outline the project well, and find vendors who will be consultative in their approach. Often a good vendor can suggest good features for your project that you may have overlooked, and raise concerns about feasibility and cost (do you REALLY have a Google budget to build this??) and tell you how they can save you money, or implement tools to speed up time to deliver.

For example, we once had a client with a small budget that needed a content management tool to manage the kiosk. We could have built him one if he had budget, but he needed to spend much of his budget on hardware, design, and video production. So we suggested the use of a free third party tool to allow him to manage textual content, in this case it was a calendar of events. This allowed him to spend his money where he really needed it. Now we also had to explain the dangers, which include that vendor going out of business, etc. But the risk was low since the third party vendor was Google. We integrated the Google tool within a day and had that portion of the project out of the way.

At the same time, realize that your kiosk vendor has to be careful not to give you a full project description for free that you can shop around to his competitors. So often a consultative approach may lead to a consultation fee to cover the cost of R&D, Project specifications creation, flow charts, wireframes, etc. If you don't have this work already done, then expect to pay for it. In the end, you'll have all you need to get the funding, or have a clearly defined project, so you and your vendor know what is being built.

Some prospects come to us with clear specifications for their project, so we can give clear pricing. Others are vaguely written, or don't have enough information to accurately price but still want a price by next week. So those proposals are often written with price ranges such as "between $50K - $75K depending on complexity". If the client cannot define how complex it will be, what features it will have, and what level of integration is needed... how can I know what it will cost me to build it? As a solution provider, I have to be fair to the client and my company.

A kiosk solution provider should listen to your needs, and be consultative in their approach. Sometimes it is not about selling you the biggest project they can, but rather selling you the right project for your budget or what is right for the project. But make sure you are being fair to them and giving them what they need to help you. Like Jerry Maguire said to Rod Tidwell in the movie "Jerry Maguire" - - "Help me... help you".