Operating as a bank is expensive. Having a lot of branches and a lot of ATMs doesn’t mean that you have money to burn, and by the time you’ve reached this stage, you’ve probably already adopted most of the more obvious strategies for reducing costs. There’s one problem that frequently persists for companies in this position, and that’s the cost of making cash available to customers. Traditional ATM software is, frankly, not very good at this, but that’s why the new generation of software is so exciting. By upgrading to a new system, you could make significant ongoing savings.
Ensure Cash Availability
As far as customers are concerned, the essential thing that banks can do for them is to make sure that they have access to cash when they want it. ATMs running out of money means instant negative comments, and if it happens regularly, customers will soon start looking elsewhere for their banking services. With many ATMs now also offering a range of additional services, queuing can be a problem, but when cash is quick to access, most customers will be more forgiving of this than they will of having to queue inside a branch. By having an industry-leading forecasting software for ATMs, banks can ensure that all operations can be carried out quickly and efficiently – and the ATM software also feeds back the data needed to enable quick and accurate forecasting so that cash supplies can be delivered to exactly where they’re needed.
Decrease Cash in Float
When deliveries can be planned with greater accuracy, it becomes less necessary to keep a large reserve of cash available for each machine to avoid the risk of it running out. This means that money can be efficiently distributed as it is deposited back into the system, reducing the amount needed in the system overall. The improvement in efficiency also makes it possible for the number of staff involved in the management and distribution systems to be reduced, enabling banks to move their employees into more productive areas (which, in turn, usually increases job satisfaction). It decreases the security risks and insurance costs associated with having to store larger amounts of cash and means that it’s easier to store the bulk of the float in more secure areas for longer.
Identify Patterns of Use
As well as helping you to identify which individual ATMs are at risk of running low on cash, the new generation of ATM software makes it easy to track larger patterns of use so that, for instance, a bank can see how much money is likely to be needed across all its machines in a particular locality across a set period such as a weekend. That makes it much easier to plan the storage and distribution of cash at a local level, reducing the overall number of journeys needed and thus saving on transport and security costs (as well as reducing the bank’s carbon footprint). New software can process this data automatically and make it easy to access the information needed for decision making without the need for employees to spend lengthy periods on analysis. It’s a much more practical way to handle large scale operations.
Enjoy Improved Intelligence
With automated software taking more of the strain, it’s possible to process data coming back from ATMs much more efficiently, eliminating the lags which have traditionally accounted for many of the problems with not having enough cash in the right place at the right time. This enables quicker action in the event of emergencies such as a run on a bank, and it also means that managers at every level have access to a picture of what is happening across the system in real-time when dealing with day to day issues such as delayed cash transports or unplanned temporary branch closures. Because it’s automatic, the error rate is close to zero – much better than relying on human processing, given that even the best training can never eliminate mistakes. Over time, improved intelligence enables much better strategic decision making and planning.
Changing software is always a headache, and many companies delay it because they don’t like the idea of delays or downtime, but once it’s done, speed and efficiency increase so much that those worries are drastically reduced in day to day operations. In today’s highly competitive environment, it’s essential banks reduce their costs while maintaining the seamless cash access experience that customers have come to expect. The latest ATM software makes that possible.
