How to buy SafeDistance Platform and/or Device licenses?

SafeDistance Solution Main components

SafeDistance by Option consists out of 3 components:

1. The badges that monitor the distance with BLE technology

2. The gateways that communicate with the badges over LoRa communication

3. The platform that communicates with the gateways (typically over a cellular connection) to monitor the situation

For each of these 3 components, the pricing model is different:
 

• The badges are sold as hardware items with a one-time cost. The cost will decrease when the purchase volume is higher.
  
   
• The gateways are also sold as hardware items with a one-time cost and also here the cost will decrease when the purchase volume is higher. However, if the LTE modem is used in the gateway to communicate to the Cloud, there needs to be a SIM card inserted in the gateway and this SIM card will have a recurring cost aspect because the data communication is typically charged per data quantity. This recurring cost is currently NOT covered by the eCommerce platform

• The platform 
   For the platform there is a recurring cost per month. This cost is split in two components:

1. A fixed monthly cost per end-user. Note that the cost is different for a trial version than for a regular subscription of one year.

 

2. A monthly cost per badge that is used by the end-user. This monthly cost will decrease when the number of badges per end-user will increase.
 For trials of one month, the cost per badge is fixed and independent of the purchase volume.

What is an end-user?

• An end-user is a company or organization where all badges are shared in one common pool. 
• Typical examples of an end-user:
  1. A company where all employees are in one or several buildings on the same site.
  2. A university campus where all students and staff walk in-and-out several buildings.
• When the organization is spread out over multiple regions, it is sometimes better to treat the individual companies in the organization as separate end-users for ease of analysis and troubleshooting in case of issues. Typical examples are:
  1. Company headquarter is in state A and a large engineering facility is in state B. Both sites will have their own Covid-19 team so it can be easier to separate both sites and treat both of them as separate end-users.
  2. Company has locations in several countries around the world (US, India, Europe). In this scenario it can be preferred as well to treat the different locations as separate end-users.
• It is possible to define groups in the platform so instead of defining separate end-users it is often also possible to put people in separate groups. Typical examples are:
  1. A retail company with stores in many cities. Every retail store will be defined as a group in the overall end-user organization. All badges will be seen on the corporate level.

 Trial version versus standard version

Trial version

• Can be used to evaluate the solution during a period of one month or it can be used to temporarily add seasonal workers to the platform (only active during the summer months eg).

• Can be used on as many badges as desired but there is only one price per month so no volume discounts apply.
  
  Is valid for one month only and is NOT automatically renewed afterwards. This means you can make a new trial license after the month expired but you cannot renew the previous license.

Standard version

• Is the standard offering. The (lower) monthly price is multiplied by 12 and the monthly price also decreases with the overall volume of badges in the company.

• Is valid for one year and is automatically renewed after one year unless the end-user stops the service. A notification email will be sent out before the expiration date. 

 eCommerce Step-by-Step

There are two ways to access this website:

• Go to www.safedistance.io and click on the ‘shop’ button on the right side of the screen
• This will link to www.option.com/shop . You can also go to this website directly.

Select the currency that you want to use by clicking on the small triangle behind the default currency (EUR, €). 

The prices will adjust according to the currency selected. In the billing step, your credit card will be charged with this currency. To keep the prices stable, a fixed conversion rate of 1,1 has been applied.

Select either the 1-month trial version of the solution (not renewable) or the 1-year automatically renewable version of the solution by clicking on the ‘Purchase’ button.

When you select ‘SafeDistance Trial’ a window will open where you can select :

1. the total number of  badges and gateways that you want to use (or add) in the platform. Don’t forget to add the number of gateways as well to the total count.
2. whether you still need to pay the platform fee for the trial month. If you already bought a number of badges before and you want to add more badges in the trial, the platform fee no longer needs to be paid

Click on ‘Purchase’ to go to the next step

An overview of the shopping cart will be presented

The most important field in this cart overview is the vendor code. This is a code that you should have received from the organization (=vendor) that has sold the badges and gateways to you. With the vendor code we can honor the contractual agreements between Option and this vendor with respect to platform payments. Fill in the code that you received (eg XYZ123) and click on ‘Apply vendor code’.

 These are the other actions that can be done in this cart overview:

• Clicking on ‘Continue shopping’ will bring you back to the login screen. The contents of the cart will be maintained however. 

• You can remove items from the cart by clicking on the red X   in  front of each item.

• You can adjust the number of badges that you want to buy

Don’t forget to click on ‘Update cart’ after each change in the number of badges so the subtotal can be recalculated. The color of this button will change to dark blue to indicate that the cart needs updating.

After the update the subtotal amount is changed and the button color changes back to light blue.

• Finally, you can also click on ‘Proceed to checkout’ to go to the next step in the transaction.

You are now in the ‘Checkout’ phase of the purchase.

• If you are a returning customer there is no need to fill in all the billing details again. Click on the text ‘click here to login’ and your details  can be retrieved based on your username and password.

• If you did not fill in a vendor code yet in the previous step, you will be reminded again in this phase to fill in this code. 

• If you don’t have a login yet, fill in the billing details. For future orders it is important to enter the account username and password in the last part of this section.  The system can create a strong password for you if you would like to do so.
  
   

• Next, do a final check of the order and fill in the credit card details

5.  After you clicked on ‘Order’ in the previous  step, your payment will be processed and you will view an order confirmation on the display.