Thomas Smith, president of MontegoNet, says his Portsmouth company is a "one-stop shopping" provider of interactive kiosk solutions, servicing a variety of industries, especially financial services. Behind Smith is the company's logo.
From manufacturing to monitoring, Portsmouth firm offers full package
MontegoNet
Rhode Island's Market Has Changed. Developers, Builders, Investors and Sellers Must Change With It.
By Emilio DiSpirito IV License Partner | Engel & Völkers Oceanside Leader | The DiSpirito…
Learn More
President/CEO: Thomas Smith
Type of Business: Interactive kiosk provider
Location: 207 High Point Ave., Portsmouth
Employees: 11
Year Founded: 1996
Annual Sales: More than $1 million in 2004
MontegoNet advertises itself as a company that provides complete Internet kiosk solutions. A quick tour of its offices reveals what’s so complete about it.
The front of their office suite in the Portsmouth Business Park is a showroom displaying the various kiosk models for sale, from the most-popular Barbados model to the Nassau, which is marketed to security-conscious customers.
“We do everything here,” said President/CEO Thomas Smith. “The manufacturing, the software, customization and then monitoring.”
In the back of the building are the physical kiosk construction areas where workers shape sheets of wood and metal for assembly. Another portion of the building houses the creative team’s offices, where software is designed and kiosk looks are developed.
MontegoNet, which has 11 employees and opened in February 1996, supplies kiosks to banks, universities, hospitals, corporations, retail establishments and government entities. Some companies order kiosks to showcase new products and take the kiosk with them to trade shows around the country. You might have seen their products in Bank Rhode Island branches, on the Johnson & Wales University campus or at Raytheon. If you haven’t seen their kiosks, it might be because they “have more kiosks in Hawaii than in Rhode Island,” Smith said.
The machines, most of which have a keyboard and trackball, allow businesses and banks to combine their company content with their Internet services for easy customer access.
“We take what they have and augment it with the kiosk,” Smith said.
In the showroom area of MontegoNet, Smith demonstrated a kiosk designed for the National Football League’s Washington Redskins. As a flat screen overhead plays game highlights, kiosk users can access a computer screen for team information. XM Satellite radio co-sponsors the kiosk, which can also access the complete XM channel lineup.
Once MontegoNet designs and delivers the kiosk, it remains involved with the customer. A room filled completely with servers monitors all the kiosks for any potential problems.
“We can even tell if it’s out of paper,” Smith said.
Banks use the kiosks for a variety of functions, Smith said.
“The kiosks do everything an ATM doesn’t,” Smith said. Instead of customers tying up an ATM to transfer funds or make loan payments, they can use the kiosks. Some banks have the kiosks in their lobbies to acquaint customers with their online banking services.
“People at the branch can then set customers up so they can bank from home,” Smith said. “It’s much cheaper for banks to have their customers to do online banking.”
The touch screens operate via a series of acoustic wave sensors set all around the edge of the monitors. When the screen is touched, it sends a sound wave through the glass that can approximate when and where the screen was touched, and therefore which operations need to be performed.
“It’s a lot like throwing a pebble in the water and the ripples spread outward,” Smith said to illustrate how the screens work.
One prototype MontegoNet is working on is a bill payment station that would allow consumers to pay for utilities such as cable, Internet, phone or electricity using cash. The product has been in development for two years and roughly 10 versions are in operation at various locations.
It takes about four to six weeks to develop a kiosk, from concept to construction, Smith said. They start both the software development and the physical designs for the unit simultaneously.
After meeting with clients to get a picture of their business’s needs, the development team “storyboards” the kiosk to walk the client through how the program would run.
After reviewing the client’s feedback, the MontegoNet staff works closely with the customer until a finished product is produced.
Smith said one of the reasons many customers select MontegoNet is because “we’re basically one-stop shopping.
We do the hardware and the software, and if they have any issues, they just call us.”
