Envent is reinventing the (not so) humble public kiosk

Wilson & Gilkes Helps Envent Make Cities Smarter

What an Envent kiosk can do now is as­ton­ish­ing. Digital wayfind­ing is a given, but then there’s the option of a sani­tis­ing dispenser, a de­fib­ril­la­tor, EFT cash machine, cameras, keyboards, printers, VOiP phone, loud­speak­ers, wi-fi access point, magstripe card reader, running water, NFC, RFID, intercoms, A/C units, mul­ti­lin­gual options; portable, lockable… Ask Envent for a tele­por­ta­tion feature and you may well get it!

“We offer a custom design service, so people come to us with problems and we design the machines to find solutions,” according to Envent founder Justin Dean. “That’s our own IP, the way we add a whole bunch of new features and func­tion­al­i­ty to our kiosks, using our cre­ativ­i­ty.”

Envent machines can be found in many hospitals, uni­ver­si­ties, retail complexes and as ‘smart city’ council solutions.

FUTURE OF KIOSKS

With Envent’s non-stop passion for in­no­va­tion, the spectre of Covid, with it public health chal­lenges, is just another hurdle to be overcome with smart thinking.

“We’re working with the Uni­ver­si­ty of Newcastle on a new product called Sentinel. Not only does it feature an automatic hand sani­tis­ing dispenser, it in­cor­po­rates AI to count the number of people coming in and out of a venue. An alarm can be deployed when the threshold is reached — ideal for the hos­pi­tal­i­ty sector.”

“We’ve got an Aus­tralian patent on the tech­nol­o­gy behind Sentinel, and hopefully we’ll be selling millions of them around the world in the next 12 to 18 months.”

LONG HAUL

Being a tech­nol­o­gy product, it’s easy to surmise that an Envent kiosk will be su­per­seded in time for the next iPhone release. Not so. Justin Dean explains:

“We design our kiosks to be modular and bul­let­proof. We expect at least 10 years out of them, maybe even 20 years. If a better display tech­nol­o­gy comes along, then we can upgrade the machine, and the same goes for the wifi, the PC, and other tech­nolo­gies; they can all be replaced and upgraded to extend the life of the machine.”

“One thing that’s re­as­sur­ing, we know it’s not the enclosure that will limit the life of the kiosk. If the kiosk is outdoors, we com­mis­sion Wilson & Gilkes to use tough 3mm-thick stainless steel. It won’t rust. It will last and last.”

WILSON & GILKES PART­NER­SHIP

Justin Dean ref­er­ences times when he’s bowed to cost pressures and engaged cheaper steel fab­ri­ca­tors and Asian suppliers but vows to not go down that route again:

“We choose Wilson & Gilkes to man­u­fac­ture our shrouds for a few reasons: quality of the product, the integrity of the guys — when they say they’re going to supply by a certain time, they always deliver —they’re easy to deal with and the pricing is really good… all the key things you’re looking for in a supplier.”

“Wilson & Gilkes has a good design team. They’ll actually check our designs and come back with sug­ges­tions to in­cre­men­tal­ly improve. We call that kaizen. I’m a big proponent of Japanese phi­los­o­phy, and kaizen is all about con­tin­u­ous im­prove­ment through in­no­va­tion and evolution. Wilson & Gilkes get it, and our part­ner­ship with them is crucial to the success of Envent.”

Envent: 1800 885 648 or www.envent.com.au 

Contact via email for specific in­for­ma­tion and/or a quote.