STRATEGIC PARTNERS
While most ATM vendors enjoy a good game of 'our technology is better than yours,' NCR and Fujitsu have acknowledged 'yours is pretty good too' by forming a strategic alliance to collaborate on research and development and the introduction of new products and technologies.
April 11, 2002
While most ATM vendors enjoy a good game of "our technology is better than yours," two of the world's top manufacturers have acknowledged "yours is pretty good too" by forming a strategic alliance to collaborate on research and development and the introduction of new products and technologies.
NCR Corporation and Fujitsu Limited say their newly-announced alliance will enhance R&D efficiency and make it possible to bring new ATM products to market faster.
Keith Taylor, senior vice president of NCR's Financial Solutions Division, said that the speed of bringing new products to market has become crucial at a time when "we are on the edge of an absolute eruption of changes in ATM technology, both in hardware and in software."
The two companies will establish a joint team to develop selected new ATM technologies to introduce into their respective product lines. They will continue to compete in the distribution, sale and servicing of ATMs as separate organizations.
According to the Nilson Report, an industry trade publication, NCR was the world's leading ATM manufacturer in terms of new units shipped in 2000, with 50,322 ATMs. Fujitsu was number six, with 13,381 ATMs. Fujitsu is the leader in Japan (with 8,850 units), where advanced ATM technologies are common, and also has a presence in the rest of Asia, Europe and the United States. Nilson's data for 2001 is not yet available.
Koichi Hironishi, group president of Fujitsu's Consumer Transaction Systems Group, identified increasing globalization, the diffusion of Internet technologies, new clearing methods and the blurring of borders between financial and retail industries as among the key changes impacting the financial services business. All of this is creating demand for more technologically sophisticated financial self-service products, he said.
"Combining Fujitsu's and NCR's complementary development strengths will enable us to meet these requirements more quickly and cost-effectively than either could do alone," Hironishi said.
Despite a relationship that will include complex issues such as ownership of intellectual property, Taylor said it will work because the two companies share complementary technologies as well as a history of amicable relations.
"I think you have to have a real feeling of trust to make a partnership like this work," he said. "We work and play well together, and we share common ideas about where this marketplace should go."
Both companies were early proponents of moving ATMs from an OS/2 environment to a Windows-based platform, said Kent Schrock, Fujitsu's director of marketing. They share similar software strategies, NCR with APTRA and Fujitsu with PRIZM, Schrock said.
Acknowledging that the two companies compete in several of the same markets, Taylor said that service, responsiveness and customer relationships will become the keys to winning new customers and maintaining existing relationships.
The alliance will benefit not only NCR and Fujitsu, Taylor said, but also the companies' customers and the consumer.
"Increased consumer satisfaction is the key to expanding our market presence and delivering greater profit and growth to our respective financial self-service businesses," he said.
While the two companies currently have no plans for any shared activities beyond technology development, Taylor said that could change as the companies grow closer. "There may be opportunities that will come up that we'd like to explore," he said.
For instance, he mentioned that by combining resources, the two companies might be able to obtain more attractive rates and better service from suppliers, that they could then in turn pass on to their customers.
While he can foresee that type of an arrangement, Schrock doesn't believe the two companies will share sales or service channels. And he dismissed the possibility of a future merger. "I don't think that's in the cards," he said.
