Engen service stations around the country are having their checkout tills given an overhaul, with a large-scale roll-out of new point of sale (POS) hardware.

Tactile Technologies has been selected as the touch-screen vendor that will provide the new POS touch monitors, in what has been described as one of the company's largest projects yet.

Datacentrix, the company which won the tender, handpicked Tactile Technologies to be its touch supplier for the Engen roll-out, dubbed "Reinvigorate".

Dale Hesketh-Mare, account manager at Datacentrix, said the decision was made to partner with Tactile Technologies in this venture because of the company's solid reputation within the industry.

This initial roll-out is for about 1 800 units, across 600 Engen outlets nationwide, with the potential to extend to another 300 sites.

"We're aiming to have all 900 outlets revamped over five years," explains Engen IT marketing manager, Japie Muller. The upgrade includes Hewlett-Packard computers accompanied by Elo TouchSystems' 1515L desktop LCD touch monitor with integrated swipe card reader.

Explaining the decision to partner with Datacentrix and Tactile Technologies for this venture, Muller said Engen had a strong and established relationship with Datacentrix. "Furthermore, Elo TouchSystems has a reputation for being hardened and extremely reliable. This is a high performance product," Muller concludes.

"This is a big project for us," says Tactile Technologies' managing director Mauro Mercuri, "there are many small vendors in the touch-screen business, but few receive orders of this size."

Datacentrix won the Engen bid in November 2007. In that same month, Tactile Technologies received orders and commitments which amounted to the combined value of about R28 million, to be rolled out over the next few years. This attests to the strong position which Tactile Technologies holds in the market, a company which has long been regarded as a rising star in the touch-screen technology industry.

For more information, visit www.tactiletechnologies.co.za.