ATMs may not afford to go out of service at NAB

MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA: NCR Corporation has announced that National Australia Bank (NAB) will deploy NCR Predictive Services, a monitoring solution that predicts ATM hardware failures before they occur in order to maximize ATM uptime and provide a better customer experience.

As the announcement states: The technology increases ATM uptime by warning of the imminent failure of individual components, enabling repairs or replacements to be made before they put the machine out of service. NAB's sister bank, Bank of New Zealand, was the world's first bank to deploy the solution and has enjoyed significant improvements in the performance of its ATM network, including greater availability and lower operational costs.

"We will be the first Australian bank to adopt NCR Predictive Services, which will boost the reliability and availability of our ATM network," said Alistair Munro, NAB head of ATMs and Self Service.

As well as predicting hardware failures, NCR Predictive Services is claimed to provide detailed error information so that engineers with the right skillsets are dispatched with the right parts, increasing the proportion of faults that are fixed first time. The technology also enables many of the simpler (‘first-line') problems to be fixed remotely, without ever sending an engineer, meaning ATMs are back in service more quickly.

"As well as increasing ATM availability, NAB will continue working with NCR to deliver consistently better service and more convenient banking for our customers around the clock," Munro said.

The anticipated improvements in ATM network performance from NCR Predictive Services will enable the bank to extend the operating life of its 1400-odd fleet, while the proactive support model and the ability to fix problems remotely, without dispatching a technician, will contribute to lower overall operating costs.

Predictive monitoring is a key component of a renewed NCR Managed Services agreement that extends NCR's provision of ATM support services to NAB until 2017, a total of ten years. The original seven-year arrangement began when NCR won a bid to refresh the entire NAB ATM network in 2007. The renewed contract includes first-line and second-line maintenance, software distribution, asset management, total installation services, incident management and help desk.

With the roll-out of NCR Predictive Services due for completion in July, NAB is confident it can emulate the impressive results at Bank of New Zealand. At BNZ, NCR's predictive technology raised ATM availability to 99 per cent. First-line visits have been cut by 30 per cent, and more than 40 percent of more complex ("second-line") issues are fixed before they put the ATM out of service. Achieving similar improvements across NAB's ATM network will equate to serving customers for an extra 60,000 hours each year.