After another successful year for Cammax, we asked ourselves what keeps the company moving forward — Smarter kiosks? Better software? The real answer, according to our CEO, is simple: Our People.
We caught up with one of our longest-serving team members to find out what keeps him inspired, motivated, and proud to wear the Cammax badge.
Read on to discover Dave’s story and his reflections on the company’s journey leading up to its acquisition by Modaxo.
“I am production manager at Cammax. I look after the planning, building and testing of every kiosk Cammax deploys as well as being involved in the ongoing development of our kiosks. I’ve been at Cammax now for just over nine years. I started out as an engineer but because I was open to learning new skills, I was able to take on some production management duties and after three years I got promoted to Production manager at Ripley.”
“Cammax has grown a lot, physically grown a lot. We’ve taken on a lot of people since I started here. But the technology we deploy has also increased a lot too. A big thing that we’ve developed over the past few years is the monitoring module technology which is implemented to almost every one of our kiosks. It allows us to do a lot of cool things, such as remotely control components in our customers machines and automate processes, things like that. We’ve developed more into transport. When I first started, it was primarily parking and councils, a little bit of bus ticketing, but primarily was parking and councils.”
But obviously now we’re doing a lot of transport work, rail in particular. Because we have branched out into more sectors, the security of the kiosks has had to change. Our customers now have much higher security requirements. The hardware hasn’t changed all that much – that’s still as good as ever – it’s how we implement it that has changed.”
“Cammax has always prided itself on going the extra mile for the customer. We’ve always been a bespoke kiosk provider whereas our competitors provide what you probably call an off the shelf solution. We’ll bend over backwards to meet the customer’s needs. If you want purple, we’ll paint your kiosk purple. Whatever configuration you need for your deployment, Cammax will do it. If we don’t know how to do it, we’ll work out how to do it.”
“So, I think it’s probably the Atlas because it represents the high watermark for the development of our kiosks over the past nine years I’ve been here. The level of security and the amount of technology we can now integrate into a kiosk would have been unthinkable only a few years ago. The Atlas is the pinnacle of what Cammax has developed over the past few years. However, I expect it’s going to be surpassed by the Orion when we start building those. But at the moment, it’s the Atlas.”
“Well yes but I’m not the only one that does it, but I do like to see Cammax kiosks out in the wild. For example, a couple of years ago, I was in Cornwall, and I can’t remember the name of the town, but I parked in a multi-storey car park. It was pay on exit and as I’m walking out of the car park, I saw a machine. I immediately thought oh, I remember that one. I built that one. I built that one seven years ago and it’s still here! Just shows how robust our machines are.”
“I think one of the biggest things has been the emphasis on assessing employees’ performance and then providing frameworks for development and training. The new scorecard system is a way of getting the most out of our people. It shows that there are opportunities for career growth and that the company does care about employee development.”
“I’d say go for it. At times, the roles are difficult, but they’re ultimately rewarding. I mean, I’ve worked here nine years, and I’ve never once woken up on a on a Monday morning not looking forward to going to work. Lots of us have been here for 10 years plus so that must say something. And we’ve had people come through and then move to other roles within the business.”
Technology evolves — but passion, expertise, and job satisfaction never go out of style. Here’s to the people behind every Cammax kiosk, and to another year of innovation.