Engen

In November 2007, Tactile Technologies was selected as the touch screen supplier to one of South Africa’s largest oil and gas station companies: Engen. The company that landed the tender with Engen was Datacentrix and they hand picked Tactile Technologies to be the supplier of touch screen hardware for this ambitious project, which became termed “Reinvigorate”.

Project “Reinvigorate”

At the time, the Engen project – which saw the country-wide distribution of new POS (Point-of-Sale) touch screen hardware – was one of Tactile Technologies’ largest ever orders, although Datacentrix took the reins on punting our Elo monitors and project managed the entire deployment of the new POS systems.

Datacentrix account manager, Dale Hesketh-Mare, announced the decision to partner with Tactile Technologies owing to our “solid reputation within the industry.”

The Engen project “Reinvigorate” began with an initial distribution of around 1,800 Elo touch screen monitors to 600 different Engen petrol stations around the country. In fact, only a month after Datacentrix won the tender, they sent an order to Tactile Technologies that amounted to several million and so far, to date, the contract between these two tech giants amounts to more than R25 million.

Engen IT marketing manager, Japie Muller, explained at the time: “We’re aiming to have all 900 outlets revamped over the next five years.”

The project itself saw all old POS technology replaced with Elo Touch Solutions’ 1515L desktop LCD touch monitors, which carry integrated swipe card readers. On the decision to partner with Tactile Technologies and Datacentrix for this particular project, Muller reported that Engen had historically had a healthy, long-standing relationship with Datacentrix.

Additionally, “Elo Touch Solutions has a reputation for being hardened and extremely reliable. This is a high performance product,” said Muller.

In 2008, Engen’s project “Reinvigorate” was one of the largest Tactile Technologies had ever participated in and our selection by Datacentrix was really testament to the powerful position we held – and continue to hold – in the market place.

Tactile Technologies’ managing director, Mauro Mercuri, was quoted at the time as saying: “There are many vendors in the touch-screen business, but few receive orders of this size.”

Today, most, if not all Engen garages across the country are kitted out with sophisticated Elo touch screen monitors that are testament to the proud work Tactile Technologies has achieved in partnership with Datacentrix.