As the ATM Industry Association gears up for its big U.S. conference, some new initiatives and restructuring are expected to have a global impact.
Mike Lee, the association's chief executive, says while 2009 proved to be a challenging year financially, 2010 is gearing up to be one of the organization's strongest.
"2009 was set aside as a bridge year, and as we started to be hit by the credit crisis in October of last year, we started thinking about the next five-year plan," he said. "We're getting ready to launch the new plan: 'To transform our chapters into their optimal state.' And we're here to tell the ATM industry that it's time to move out of the defensive mode and toward more strategic thinking."
To spur strategic thinking, ATMIA is recruiting new leadership from all corners of the globe. In February, the executive board will hold elections, when Lee says two or three new directors will be added to the board.
In August, ATMIA named Peter Poon its new executive director of its Asian chapter, which at the close of 2008 had about 18 corporate members. And just this week, the association named Flora Hamilton the new manager for the chapter in Europe, which had 82 corporate members at the end of last year. The European chapter is one of ATMIA's largest, second only to the U.S. chapter, which has 273 corporate members.
ATMIA has chapters in Africa, Asia, Asia-Pacific, Canada, the Middle East, Europe, Latin America and the United States.
Restructuring
Restructuring began at the top, with the April departure of former international chief operating officer Lana Harmelink.
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"The departure of Lana did force us to do some housecleaning," Lee said. "I have taken over a few of the U.S. committees previously run by Lana, and we have shifted the creation of the U.S. conference programs to a committee model, whereby three committees helped us design the Miami event. And Lana's sponsorship portfolio has been taken over by Dana, which makes sense because the sponsorship and conference business are so closely related. We ultimately found that we had a lot of overlap and duplication."
Following some cost-cutting measures, the restructuring has worked out well, Lee says. But he's quick to point out that economic recovery and growth are likely to be slow for several months, making the need to add value to the organization "stronger than ever."
Much of that added value is expected to come through during February's Miami conference — the association's largest annual event.
"Miami is a better venue for the event than Nashville, where we held the conference last year and lost money," Lee said. "Ensuring the profitability of the show, now and into the future, is critical. So we've made a few changes."
Two changes include cutting a motivational speaker and an emcee from the program lineup.
"We created a stronger program by getting three committees to help us design it," Lee said. "Part of our restructuring has been to make our conferences the highest priority. We also realized it is better to focus on ATMs and to become the premier ATM event in the U.S."
Lee admits the organization's revenue and net income dipped between October 2008 and April 2009, but says it has returned to profitability.
Meeting the needs of a cross-industry segment
The majority of ATMIA's members are ISOs, which comprise 39 percent of the membership and come mostly from the United States. ISOs play an important role, but so do other member segments, including banks, manufacturers, network processors and ATM service providers, to name a few.
"We still have more ISO members than bank members, and it will be several years, I would say, that we will be dominated by ISOs," Lee said.
But ATMIA is striving to meet the needs of other groups, too, and that's why it is developing webinars and forums that target specific payments segments. That's why the Electronic Payments Forum, designed for delivery channels that fall outside the scope of ATMs, is being developed by ATMIA.
"We are producing educational webinars for every second month, starting with a webinar jointly hosted with EFTA that will focus on regulatory changes. We plan to launch that later this month," Lee said. "We also have brought out new, lower-priced sponsorship and marketing packages, as well as a new type of group membership aimed at processors. Finally, this bridge year of 2009 will transition to a new five-year plan for 2010-2014, which will be focused on optimizing each chapter into a fully functioning, profitable unit that is deeply involved in regional industry issues."
Launch of ATMIA consultants
To go along with that focus on regions, optimizing chapters' efficacy and reaching various market segments, ATMIA has launched its ATMIA Consulting and Training practice — an outsourced model that makes ATMIA-approved industry experts available to the the organization's membership.
"We feel the need to extend our reach and influence in the industry. Over the years we've come across some great consultants and some great people, and we often find that the consultants are underselling themselves," Lee said. "We wanted to create this portal where consultants and trainers could boldly offer their experience and knowledge, and offer our members an easy way to access these people."
