Innovation and services: The keys to Diebold's future

Diebold Inc.celebrated its 150th anniversary this year — a milestone few U.S. companies in today's high-tech, ever-changing business world can claim. Cassie Metzger, who joined Diebold in 1985, says the company's ability to innovate has been the key to its success.

 

Here, Metzger shares her thoughts about Diebold and its vision for the future.

 

Last month, Diebold chief executive Tom Swidarski told journalists and industry analysts during a press conference at Diebold headquarters that Diebold expects to evolve into a company that is more focused on services than hardware. For the last five years, the company has striven to reach the nearly 50-50 revenue mix it now has between products and services. Over the next five years, Diebold will strive to hit a 75-25 revenue mix of services and products, respectively.

 

That mixt will be driven by a focus on innovative services, says Greg Steffy, senior director of Diebold's Integrated Services division.

 

"The solution extends into operations, maintenance and service," Steffy said, while giving a tour of the 10,000-square-foot facility that houses Diebold's integrated services and solutions center. "We've done 15 symposiums around the country to educate customers about all of the services we now have to offer."

 

Larry Black, the director of security solutions for the Integrated Services division, says Diebold is reaching out to financial institutions and retailers — helping them to develop what he calls "smart" branches and stores.

 

"Part of what banks and retailers need help developing is monitoring, access control, fire monitoring and fire solutions, and security," he said. "We are also looking at helping them with logical security, which means offering protection on the network and helping them with their passwords, for instance. We offer neural networks to alert the bank when a card is used in a strange counjtry. We monitor the ATM. We manage the cash. We offer an end-to-end call-dispatch system that's intelligent, and we can remotely reboot ATMs, eliminating the need for a service call."

 

It's all about improving ATM uptime and overall operations, Diebold says.