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Who's who: Kent Phillips

As the vice president of business and product development for Transaction Network Services' (TNS) POS division, Kent Phillips is helping chart the evolution of ATM networking.

January 6, 2004

If not for a little one-upmanship, Kent Phillips might be teaching high school.

Phillips, vice president of business and product development for Transaction Network Services' (TNS) POS division, became interested in computer science after a mentor at Ball State University helped him realize that teaching was a noble, yet not very lucrative, profession.

Kent Phillips

"I had a friend from high school, a "C" student at best, who was making tons of money after majoring in computer science," Phillips said. "I figured if he could do it, then so could I. It's a guy thing."

Going green

It helped that Phillips had an affinity for computers -- a fact that became obvious in 1982 when he went to work for Indiana's Merchants National Bank where he helped build one of the nation's first shared ATM networks. Even today, some customers in the former Green Machine's service area refer to ATMs as "Green machines."

Green Machine was known for strong marketing efforts, including a campaign with a briefcase-carrying frog in its signature shade (PMS 48, remembers Phillips, who ordered the plastic for ATM cards).

In addition to marketing, Green Machine established a reputation for innovation. For instance, Phillips worked with Dieboldin the early '80s to integrate a proprietary card payment system at fuel pumps for the Village Pantry convenience store chain. It wasn't completely automated -- yet was cutting edge at the time, Phillips said.

"The customer swiped his card, selected the pump number and the amount of gas he wanted. A flashing light would go off on the pump control panel, and the controller had to push a key to free up the pump," he explained.

Go overseas, young man

In the late '80s, Merchants won the United States Military Bank management contract from incumbent American Express. The deal involved revamping offline ATMs and all of the accompanying front- and back-end systems to a modern online standard with new terminals, direct connect software and a Deluxe Data Systems Connex /Tandem host/switch.

Phil Kasper, now vice president of Americas Customer Service Sales for NCR's Financial Solutions division, at the time was the salesperson tasked with convincing Merchants, a Diebold customer, to use NCR 5085 ATMs and NDC software for the overseas deployments.

"In Frankfurt, Heinz-Martin Muth of NCR Germany and I met Kent Phillips, who was a player in the ATM network renovation," Kasper recalled. "Plenty of people from Indy, including the president of the bank, wanted to install Diebolds, but Kent knew the installation and field service capabilities of NCR in Germany far exceeded Diebold's (at the time). Kent stuck to his guns and Indianapolis approved purchasing NCR ATMs."

ATMs had to be configured so that troops could make withdrawals and deposits in different currencies, Phillips said. In the UK, ATM cassettes were loaded with both dollars and sterling pounds, for example, so that soldiers could make a deposit in dollars and then withdraw either dollars or pounds -- or vice versa.

Despite the numerous technical challenges, the assignment was a dream come true for the Indianapolis native. "I couldn't wait to travel the world," Phillips said.

Indeed, he journeyed to Seoul, South Korea after Europe to install more ATMs for the military.

His wanderlust had its limits, however. In 1992, when Merchants (recently acquired by National City) bid on the military contract in Panama, then under the heavyhanded control of Manuel Noriega, Phillips returned the call of a headhunter who was recruiting professionals to help run an ATM network for EDS' Consumer Network Services division.

The vision thing

Phillips welcomed the opportunity to work for a "true industry visionary" like Dale Dentlinger -- now director of E*Trade Access -- at EDS. The company had recently acquired several ATM portfolios in areas where surcharging was allowed.

"Dale told me how we were going to buy machines and make money on a quarter here and there. I didn't quite get it yet, but I could tell he did," Phillips said.

At EDS, one of Phillips' biggest projects was managing the development of the first full-motion video advertising pilot at 170 ATMs in southern California. The pilot, which grew to include 1,000 machines, is considered the industry's most successful ATM advertising venture to date.

Don Jarecki, formerly EDS' manager of retail ATMs, said he conceived the idea of video advertising -- then asked Phillips to find the technology to make it happen. "We worked well as a team. I bounced ideas off of him, and he never said 'no,' he just found ways to make them happen."

Fueled by a bit of male pride, Phillips found the video answer -- surprisingly, at a company that specialized in recorded Muzak.

"I had these friends at a small Indianapolis bank who were running ads for a local radio show on an ATM screen. I thought, 'If these guys can do it, I should be able to one up them.' In my research, I came across this company that did elevator music but had also developed a solution for running in-store advertising on gas pumps," Phillips said.

Phillips used the company's technology to modify an ATM in EDS' lobby to run Pepsi ads. It made an impression on Diebold, which had previously mounted security cameras atop ATM screens to give users a view of the area behind them as they used the machines. Diebold altered its security concept to run ads instead of camera feeds and partnered with EDS on the advertising pilot.

Phillips' easygoing disposition allows him to accomplish difficult projects with a minimum of fuss, said Jarecki, now senior vice president of business development for Palm Desert National Bank.

"In 1993 after we won the 7-Eleven contract, we were putting together our rollout schedule and had figured out we had to do 250 to 300 ATMs per month over the next 15 months," Jarecki said. "Our communications and implementations support groups had never done more than 40 ATM installations in a month. Kent was charged with delivering the good news. They told him he was nuts and just about beat him with sticks, but he was able to work through all the obstacles. We eventually ended up installing an average of 350 ATMs for several months in a row, largely due to Kent's perseverance."

Taste for fun

Phillips is fun to be around, said Jarecki remembering a recent evening the men met for a drink at an Irish pub while both were in New York on business.

"We both had plans later in the evening and were just going to briefly catch up before our separate plans," Jarecki said. "Five hours later, we were on a first-name basis with the bartender and convinced her to give us samples of all the liquor we had never tried before. We both ended up blowing off our obligations, and closing the place down."

Chris Klein, vice president of marketing for Mosaic Software, which has worked with TNS on a number of high-profile ATM projects, notably 7-Eleven's Vcom program, seconded Jarecki's opinion. Klein, who shares a love of motorcycles and sports cars with Phillips, calls him "a free spirit who really enjoys life."

"There's nothing like the freedom and exhilaration of being on a bike out in the elements with the wind in your face," said Phillips, who owns a custom Harley lowrider. "The adrenaline is pumping, and you're just focused on what you need to do to stay alive."

Phillips' experiences with video advertising at EDS led him to TNS in May of 2000.

"ATM host technology is fully developed, and we've got ATMs with killer capabilities. It's the network, how you get data from A to B, that's the Achilles heel," he explained. "Right now, we've got a straw where we need a fire hose. There's plenty of room for network evolution. That's where it's all headed, and that's what we're trying to do at TNS."

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