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FEG Group, Australia’s largest home entertainment company, is preparing to deploy more than 1,000 movie rental kiosks throughout Australia. The company needs a software platform to realize the management and visibility of kiosks. FEG will transfer business from physical stores to kiosks.
Therefore, the head of the company, Ed Nedelko, contacted Steve Latham, the former CTO of the entertainment technology company NCR Group, to seek a solution. In the end, Banyan Hills, a new company established by Latham, provided it with an Internet of Things platform to realize the collection and management of kiosk data, which allows the company to learn about the kiosk information anywhere.
The first application of the Banyan Hills software platform, Canopy, is a movie distribution kiosk with built-in RFID technology. The kiosk uses a 13.56 MHz high frequency (HF) RFID reader that is compatible with the ISO 15693 standard. The reader can collect the ID number of the RFID tag attached to the film and the related information of the film associated with the tag.
FEG operates Blockbuster, Video Ezy, EzyDVD and other brands. Nedelko said the company spent several years researching the movie rental business, and then closed physical stores in the United States and Australia. He became aware of the need for more automated distribution systems for movies in Australia, New Zealand, and Southeast Asian countries as an alternative to digital rental services such as Netflix.
Nedelko provides a box that can hold about 900 DVDs, which has a built-in credit card POS interface, cellular connection, and RFID card reader. However, finding a software to help manage the kiosks scattered around is a bigger challenge. Nedelko explained that most software companies know little about the entertainment industry. To this end, he contacted Latham, and then adopted the Canopy solution. About three years ago, the two companies began to deploy kiosks equipped with Canopy IoT software in supermarkets such as Australia and New Zealand. At present, FEG has deployed 1,100 to 1,400 kiosks, and will continue to increase to 2,500 in the future.
Here is how the system works: The customer shows the credit card to the machine. Once approved, customers can start choosing movies. The internal robot of the box distributes the movie by reading the ID number of the RFID tag. The company can then start charging.
The Canopy system not only allows the company to track the kiosk inventory, but also knows the frequency of machine use, the frequency of specific movie rentals, and the movies that have never been rented. The system can also realize various data analysis. For example, because Canopy’s management console software can display each transaction, the system can also obtain the frequency of use of the POS, so as to provide suggestions for its maintenance and replacement frequency.
The RFID data allows the company to know the frequency and time of movie rentals in each location. Banyan Hills also uses the system to predict the popularity of specific movies.
FEG can obtain Canopy reports on a daily basis to gain insight into the status of the kiosks. The company also hired full-time staff to view the real-time results of the software, and to discover the information about the failure of the kiosk in real time. The company can then arrange for employees to perform repairs quickly. Nedelko said: “The Canopy system strongly guarantees the operation of these kiosks.”
Nedelko said that after a few years of technology deployment, the biggest challenge now facing is the processing of large amounts of data in the kiosk. He plans to continue to deploy kiosks while trying to further analyze the data.
For Banyan Hills, FEG deployment is just the beginning. The company provides Canopy software for a variety of self-service technical equipment, including newsstands, vending machines, digital signage, and unattended retail equipment.
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