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Managing ATMs from a Vantage point

Gasper Corporation and e-ClassicSystems have partnered to offer users an ATM monitoring/management package that combines features of Gasper Manager and e-ClassicSystems ATM Manager Pro.

March 7, 2002

Dave Gasper was so pleased with the reception that his company's new Gasper Vantage software received at December's BAI Retail Delivery Show in Anaheim, Calif., he was willing to risk arrest.

Despite California's strict anti-smoking regulations, the president and chief executive officer of Gasper Corporation lit a stogie as the show closed - although he puffed on it only briefly before extinguishing it.

Gasper Vantage is the first major update to his company's flagship Gasper Manager ATM monitoring and management software since 1999. Late last year, Gasper partnered with Norwood Mass.-based e-ClassicSystemsto add modules from that's company ATM Manager Pro software to his Gasper Manager.

Vantage has already been piloted by the UK's Nationwide Building Society and Mexico's Bital Bank.

Among Gasper Manager's approximately 150 users are large financial institutions such as Bank of America, Bank One, Royal Bank of Scotland and Mexico's Banamex, and transaction processors such as eFunds and Metavante.

In contrast, ATM Manager Pro's 50 or so users are mostly large ISOs and small financial institutions. Tom Meurer, president of e-ClassicSystems, said the partnership with Gasper is an expeditious way to introduce his company's software to bigger banks.

"We're newer to that market, so many of these banks have no idea who we are or what we've got," Meurer said. "Working with Gasper will get us in the door sooner at some of the larger banks than we could do on our own."

In turn, Gasper hopes that the association with e-ClassicSystems will help promote his product to smaller customers. "We're concerned that we're seen as being expensive or for large customers only," he said, "but because of our modular architecture, we're more affordable than people might expect."

Meurer said that Gasper Vantage would be especially appropriate for ISOs who have established their own switch or who are clients of processors that already use Gasper software.

Gasper Vantage includes four of ATM Manager Pro's five modules:

• Asset and configuration management, which allows users to view an ATM's entire history (acquisition dates, prices and sources; hardware, software and communications configurations; and warranty and service contract information)
  
• Location and transaction activity, which displays transaction and settlement data pulled from any processor or bank switch, as well as site information such as address and contact name;
  
• Terms and accounting, which allows users to evaluate all income and expenses to create a profit and loss statement for each ATM or ATM group;
  
• Event management, which allows users to issue tickets and monitor progress for procedures such as ATM installations.

A fifth e-Classics module, for cash management, is not included in Gasper Vantage.

Gasper is a fan of the e-Classics software, particularly the asset and configuration management and terms and accounting modules. "Whenever I talk about those two features," he said, "I must put the words 'envious' and 'jealous' right next to them."

The two companies continue to refine the reports that are available to Vantage users, Gasper said. Two new features that are currently in the pipeline are reports on lost transaction opportunities and lost revenue opportunities. With such reports, Gasper said, users can better identify when they want to respond to such situations such as an ATM out of cash or malfunctioning ATM.

"Let's face it," he said. "An ATM that goes down at noon is a lot different than an ATM that goes down at 11 p.m."

While communication between the ATM operations and ATM marketing sides of a business is often limited, Meurer said that Vantage may help unite the two camps with its combination of Gasper's real-time technical data and e-ClassicSystems' batch-oriented business analyses.

"By providing features to both constituencies, we're certainly giving them more to talk about," Meurer said.

The browser-based Vantage system is more Internet friendly, Gasper said.  "It's better at getting data to remote users. They can talk directly to the system at their Internet workstation or even via a Palm Pilot or pager with email capability."

Gasper believes that this browser-based technology will make Vantage attractive to deployers of kiosks which, unlike most ATMs, can communicate directly with a browser-based system.

"The kiosk community is more advanced than the ATM world in that respect," Gasper said. "They're not hampered by all of that legacy infrastructure."

Gasper hopes to migrate all Gasper Manager users to Vantage in the next five years. He concedes this may not be easy. The company introduced the Windows-based Manager in 1995 to replace its first monitoring system, the DOS-based TM-Monitor. In 1999, Gasper announced it would no longer support TM. Yet Gasper estimates that 20 or so customers still use TM Monitor today.

"We want to convert all customers to Gasper Vantage, just like we wanted to convert all of our customers from our TM-Monitor to Gasper Manager, and just like NCR, Diebold and Triton must convert all of their customers from OS/2 to Microsoft," he said.

Gasper said the price of Vantage is the same as Gasper Manager for new customers, while existing customers can convert to Gasper Vantage under a migration program. 

"We are changing our entry level total pricing (which includes hardware, software and installation) to be more competitive and better valued for customers who have smaller networks or less pressing needs for higher availability," he added.

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