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Over 140 decision makers of financial institutions, CIT companies, retailers and experts in retail banking and cash management areas from more than 40 countries converged on the 8th GRG Global Customer Exchange (GCE) in September 2013. The three-day event heard presentations from some of GRG’s customers and partners, GRG researchers as well as industrial experts sharing some of their recent experiences.
Featuring the theme “Innovation Streamlines Your Cash Cycle”, GCE 2013 demonstrated GRGBanking’s all-round product portfolio, which is capable of optimizing every step of customers' entire cash cycle. Adam Lee (General Manager of GRGHK) set the tone of the Day-2 workshop by illustrating the ATM Technology Development Road Map of GRGBanking. He also illustrate the cash cycle ecosystem and highlighted the areas of branch automation, cash center and retail back office are where GRG products can find tremendous opportunities.
Why CRM: Less Cost, More Secure and User-friendly
In addition to the concept “Total Cost of Ownership” (TCO), Dr. Eduardas Vaigauskas (Senior Consultant of GRG) introduced another term called “Total Cost of Transaction” (TCoTr), which is the TCO divided by total number of transactions planned to be generated during the time period of life cycle. By evaluating the TCoTr of the investment on an ATM tender, banks can find out its indirect expense and make decision in a more sophisticated and comprehensive perspective.
Coming next in the Cash Recycling Machine session were regional case studies presented respectively by guests from Vietnam, Turkey and Chile. While banks in Vietnam and Chile are gradually stepping forward to cash recycler and start to realize that cash recycler is able to reduce the cost of cash, CIT and labor in cash centers and counters, banks in Turkey had foreseen the cost pressure and introduced large number of cash recyclers to replace their fleets. More innovative technologies have been applied in that cross-continental country to leverage the user-experience of CRM, such as palm vein recognition, cash withdrawal via QR code, etc.
Win-Win Modes for Banks, Retails and Financial Institutions
The traditional cash collection process in retail business is manual and inefficient, along with the potential internal shrinkage and security concerns according to Heidi Hoo (African Regional Project Director of GRG). She pointed out that GRG’s intelligent retail cash collection solution had witnessed possible synergies in combining the cash processing between banks, CITs and retails with different business models in China, Taiwan, South Africa and Australia.
The “Before-After” examples from GRG customers in Taiwan, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait described how the cash & credit flow from retailer to CIT to bank has been geared up to a fast track. In addition to time/labor saving which have been proved by 600 retailers in Dream Mall (Taiwan’s largest shopping mall), that transformation promoted the security of cash transit in each process, which increased corporate customer experience drastically in the Gulf Region.
Innovative Branch Transformation Solutions by Video Teller Machine
If cash recyclers and intelligent cash deposit machines are the keys to solve the current challenges, video teller machine (VTM) can be seen as the concept to the future. Pranas Griskevicius (European Regional Project Director of GRG) explained how that futuristic solution enables banks to expand their service network rapidly in relatively low cost compared with traditional branch setup, while at the same time bringing high-tech and user-friendly experience. More practical advantages like numerous cross-selling opportunities, sci-fi style outlook and interface (Metro style) design, were inspiring audiences’ imaginations.
As the two developing countries with severe competitions in retail banking sector, Turkey and China share some similarities in the adoption of the latest and hottest technologies. In both countries the VTM is gradually becoming from an innovative pioneer to a “must-have” to showcase the bank’s innovation tendency of its brand image. Two guests who are familiar with video banking shared their case experiences in the two countries on the workshop. The similarity of the two countries is, highlight of privacy in that “chamber” design for the VTM deployment, while bank in Turkey has a more aggressive approach to eliminate the existence of traditional “counter” in an off-premise digital branch, compared to the VTM in China is mostly located in branches.
Arising Opportunity of Cash Sorting in Cash Center
As the amount of cash is increasing very fast in recent years both in developed and developing countries, the central banks also developed strictly cash processing policy to guarantee a healthy and stable cash circulation. In the mean time, the need of commercial bank and CIT company to improve cash processing (authentication, counting and sorting) efficiency and reduce the labor cost is becoming more urgent.
Li Jing Yi (Marketing Director in IntelliCash Equipment Co. Ltd, a GRG subsidiary) aired his opinions that intelligent cash sorting machine with serial number tracking function is a practical solution to the above-mentioned challenge. Presentations about Indonesia and Chile showed that local CIT companies might find opportunities by providing service to improve the cash processing efficiency.
Various Topics from the Most Mature Markets to the Most Untapped
The Day-3 Seminar witnessed a group of various topics in the industry, spanning from ATM Benchmarking, to the latest trend in USA, one of the most mature markets and in the most untapped in Africa.
Francesco Burelli (Partner at Value Partners) revealed some surprising conclusions regarding cost management from ATMIA's ATM Benchmarking study, developed in conjunction with Value Partners. One of them, he argued that there is little correlation between the type of management and the cost performance of ATM. ATM management practices and economic performance, as he believed, has significant opportunity for improvement.
Mohamed Adam (CIO of Al-Salam Bank) and Dr. Osama Ahmed Ibrahim (General Manager, Intelligent Solutions for System & Software) gave a presentation introducing their unique experience of Africa market. The whole Africa payment market is said to remain largely untapped and is found with a huge opportunity. However the great diversity with payment and money transfer behavior often varying considerably from country to country make it a unique place from others worldwide. Besides, the continent has been taking late-mover advantage in recent years on implementing various traditional, and latest payment methods such as the successful case of M-Pesa and other mobile banking services.
Unlike Africa, the chance for USA can be summarized in two keywords: migration and upgrade. Jeff Barrow (Chairman and Managing Director of GRG International) highlighted the 3 significant changes are new operating system, EMV implementation and intelligent deposit replacing envelope deposit.
Ulrich Rosenbaum (Senior Security Product Manager of GRGBanking) discussed some of the threats presented by malware and emphasized the difficulty in updating systems frequently enough to stay ahead of threats, as the authors of malware permanently try to overcome all known firewalls, antivirus technologies and other protection mechanisms. The “whitelist“ approach is much better, in his opinion, by creating a snapshot of the known as good and knocks out anything that tries to get access. He also talked about the virtualization in the cloud / cloud solutions and highlighted the possibility of using cloud computing for centralized processing all the transactions to prevent ATM terminal from being attacked.
About GRGBanking
GRGBanking is a leading provider of currency recognition and cash processing solutions in the global market with great potential and rapid development. GRG specialize in the development/ manufacturing of Automatic Teller Machine (ATM) for financial institutions and retailers, Automatic Fare Collection (AFC) devices for railway or underground systems, as well as other currency recognition and cash processing equipment, modules and systems for over 20 years. Besides, GRG’s various Multi-Channel Software Solutions and Services cover the needs of the financial industry, retail, transportation, payment, self-service, cash automation, cash management outsourcing and managed services, customized for different customers around the world.
News Media Contact: Benny Huang