Branch Transformation

Finding the Right Balance of Features to ROI

While it might be “nice” to implement every feature and function at each ATM location, there is a cost associated with this that must be assessed. Generally, the more features and functions that are enabled, the greater the costs. The challenge for today’s FI’s is striking the right balance to deploy the best features & functions for their base

Photo: Euronet Worldwide, Inc.

August 20, 2024

Striking the Right Balance

At Euronet Software, we’re not just keeping pace with financial technology change – we’re driving it.

In 1994, Euronet took a bold step into the future of financial technology by acquiring ARKSYS and establishing Euronet Software Solutions. This strategic move was driven by a vision: to create a robust suite of payment technologies that would not only support Euronet’s global operations but also set new standards in the industry.

Fast forward to today, and Euronet Software Solutions stands at the forefront of innovation, delivering the same proven technologies that power Euronet’s worldwide business to clients around the globe. Our EFT segment deploys and operates more than 53,000 of our own ATMs worldwide, provides ATM management services for financial institutions and also provides comprehensive electronic payment processing solutions. Our journey from a pioneering acquisition to a leader in payment technology reflects our commitment to excellence and innovation.

Our years of experience have provided us with the knowledge and insight to develop cutting edge ATM software, and the strategies to deploy the right mix of features at each ATM location to maximize productivity, customer satisfaction and revenues.

Self-Service is Accelerating

It’s no secret that many financial institutions are aggressively pursuing a solely digital customer experience. There are multiple reasons for this shift to digital-- lasting impacts of the global pandemic, efforts to increase operational efficiencies, branch closures and staffing difficulties have all played a role.

Evolving customer expectations are also a key driver as the profile of the typical consumer is evolving into a far more sophisticated and demanding user. The acceleration of digital innovations across all aspects of life – from video calls to streaming your favorite entertainment means customers have quickly become accustomed to fast, intuitive experiences, and now expect this type of engagement in other areas. This holds true for financial services, especially in the self-service space, such as online and mobile banking, and ATMs.

The Possibilities are Endless

Many financial institutions are looking to shift a number of transactions that were previously performed by tellers to self-service ATMs and kiosks as they strive to find ways to increase customer engagement while reducing costs. Advancements in technology now make it possible for today’s modern ATMs to handle a wide variety of transactions as well as offer a plethora of functions such as cardless, cash recycling, digital wallet pay-outs, and even third-party product promotions.

While it might be “nice” to implement every feature and function at each ATM location, there is a cost associated with this that must be assessed and weighed. Generally, the more features and functions that are enabled, the greater the hardware and software licensing costs. The challenge for today’s FI’s is striking the right balance and deploying the right features and functions for their user base.

Significant investments can be required to expand the ATM’s capabilities. Justifying this type of expenditure requires building a business case for an improved customer experience that will increase customer retention, increase revenues, improve operational efficiency, reduce costs, or ideally-- all of the above.

When managed properly and designed for optimized customer experiences, ATMs have enormous potential and the capability to provide very engaging experiences-- experiences that are personalized, timely, and inclusive..

It's All in the Details

Real-time monitoring of your ATM fleet paired with data analytics can provide your operations team, marketing group and channel management a customer-centric view of the ATM experience and valuable insights into the usage and performance of each ATM within your fleet.

Appropriate analysis of this data can provide a deep understanding of who, what, where, when and how people are interacting with your organization’s ATMs. Understanding which customer segments are utilizing the ATM, which locations have the highest volume, what transactions are being utilized most frequently, how efficiently users are able to navigate screen flows and complete transactions, which transactions are failing most often and why can be very empowering. The insights gleaned from this information can be used to dynamically adjust and maximize the ATMs effectiveness as a digital channel. And because ATMs offer 24/7 availability, they can be a very cost effective way to expand your organizations service footprint.

Timeliness & Granularity are Key

To provide the greatest benefit ATM usage data should be captured by your fleet management system in real-time and should report the status of each component, the details of each end-to-end transaction, as well as cash levels for each location, container, currency and denomination. Having access to usage data with this level of granularity in real- time, combined with rules-based alerting can dramatically improve availability and reliability for an optimum customer experience.

Key Benefits

Increased Customer Engagement

Build a highly accurate understanding of how customers are interacting with the ATM and respond to market changes quickly:

Identify the customer segments utilizing the ATMs most frequently

Which services are most highly utilized?

By card type
Location
Time of day

Are there new services that need further promotion/increased awareness to improve feature adoption?

Improved Availability/Reliability

Capturing component and transaction failures in real-time provides insights that allow operations teams to identify and resolve issues quickly.

Not only know what customers are experiencing but, most importantly, determine why issues are occurring and how to resolve them. Readily identify patterns and the potential culprits at the root of failures. This information can be particularly useful when working to resolve issues

with hardware vendors or third-party application owners. Being able to provide the “hard-data” can reduce issue resolution time, and help to eliminate some of the back-and-forth finger-pointing that can occur when having to work through an issue with multiple vendors. Remote commanding and software update capabilities provide increased ability to resolve incidents remotely, which means means fewer onsite service calls — an important time and money saver! Reducing the number of times a terminal is serviced has been shown to reduce operator induced errors such as cassette load errors.

Enhanced Cash Forecasting

For some organizations the cash buffers throughout their cash supply chain is the primary contributor to their costs of handling cash.. With the cost of cash distribution rising, there’s mounting pressure for banks to transform and optimize their cash distribution.

When it comes to ATMs, each ATM is subject to different demographics and different levels of cash usage. The types of features enabled on the ATM can also impact cash levels. For example – an ATM that has a cash recycler will have a different cash load frequency. Even the algorithms used for bill mix and Fast Cash default values impact the demand for various denominations at the ATM. Each of these variables can influence the cash usage and product demand at each ATM location. As a result, the cash-in to cash-out ratio and denominational preferences of each ATM can vary greatly across a bank’s network.

Real-time monitoring of cash usage rates for each ATM, coupled with historical cash usage data can provide valuable insights to assist in optimizing CIT service and reducing idle cash while ensuring cash availability for customer transactions.

Optimized Offer Conversion Rates

The ATM can be a very powerful direct marketing channel. It offers some distinct advantages over direct marketing methods such as direct mail or other Digital-Out-of-Home (DOOH) advertising channels. An added bonus is that ATMs are a channel that consumers already trust. With ATM targeted offers the message is more likely to be seen by the intended recipient and there is 100% “open rate” in that the message is incorporated into the overall transaction flow. ATM users are for all intents and purposes a “captive audience” and pay close attention to the information displayed on the ATM screen.

Your marketing team can utilize A/B testing to more finely target your marketing offers (or those of 3rd parties you may partner with) to improve the overall response and conversion rates. As a company, Euronet does extensive testing of this type and uses this data to streamline transaction flows on our own ATMs and to improve the acceptance of various offers by card type, location, time of day, season, customer segments, etc.,.

Utilize data from A/B Testing to hone offers and maximize offer acceptance rates

Compare acceptance from:

A variety of offer incentives
Utilization of videos & static imagery
Various customer segments
Varied placement of offers within the transaction flow
Transaction Type
Time of day
ATM location

Improved targeting strategies and promotional offers can all be guided by the data gathered in this process.

Targeted ATM Placement

Understanding the “who, when, how & where” of ATM usage positions your organization to most positively impact overall channel profitability.. Armed with ATM usage and performance data, ATM Channel Management can make informed decisions regarding ATM placement. From identifying prime ATM locations to ensuring that each location has the right mix of ATM hardware and feature capabilities, each of these elements play an important role in optimizing each aspect of your fleet operations.

Compare the performance of ATMs across your fleet to identify top performing locations and under-performing locations:

How do these locations differ from one another?
What accounts for these differences?
- the potential traffic volume of the location
- the type of customers utilizing the ATM
- the features enabled on the ATM?
- The hardware/type of ATM at the location?
- Poor performance of the hardware at this location (downtime)?

By analyzing the data and working to identify and understand the characteristics of your organization’s most profitable ATM placements, your organization will be able to ensure that future ATMs are located in areas where optimal performance is most likely.

Taking Action on the Data

To take full advantage of the insights gleaned from analyzing the real-time data from your fleet, you need a fleet management system that not only allows you to capture the data, but that allows you to quickly send updates to your fleet with remote commanding. Whether you need to update a single ATM or the entire fleet, Euronet’s Ren Self-Service provides the comprehensive tools you need to monitor and manage all of your ATMs, regardless of manufacturer. With Ren Self-service, your organization can quickly implement software upgrades, branding updates, screen flow changes, marketing campaign revisions, or new feature adds.

Why Ren ATM Management?

Ren ATM Management is a powerful, highly flexible ATM Fleet Management solution designed to give you the freedom to manage your ATM channel as it best suits your organization and customer base.˜˜

To provide the greatest flexibility, Ren ATM Management has been designed for ATMs utilizing the leading ATM protocols— CEN XFS, NCR/Diebold Direct Connects, and Visa II. Whether you’re deploying ATMs utilizing xml screen flows, or host controlled ATMs with states and screens, or even retail ATMs with terminal controlled screen flows or a mix of all three, Ren ATM Management allows you to improve operational eff iciency and monitor your entire fleet in real- time with one browser-based user interface.

Ren ATM Management is a high availability solution that is compatible with self-service terminals running on the Windows 7 or Windows 10 operating systems (Windows CE for Retail ATMs). Ren Self-Service facilitates transaction processing, routing, journaling and reporting. Ren ATM Management is PCI compliant and PA-DSS validated and supports Key Block encryption, remote key loading (RKL) and remote commanding.

For more information on Euronet’s self-service solutions, visit our website: euronetsoftware.com or contact us at: eswsolutions@euronetworldwide,com

Included In This Story

Euronet Software Solutions

We move money in all the ways the world depends upon

Euronet Software Solutions, a division of Euronet Worldwide, is an industry leader in electronic transaction processing, providing solutions to financial institutions, retailers, service providers and consumers. Our solutions include Real-time Payment Hubs, ATM Fleet Management, as well as Credit, Debit, & Prepaid Card and Merchant Management.

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