Putting the ‘world' in Wincor World
Steady growth, innovation mark German firm's annual self-service show.
February 3, 2008 by Tracy Kitten — Editor, AMC
PADERBORN, Germany — In the converted warehouse in Paderborn, Germany, whereWincor Nixdorfhas held its annual trade show since 2001, many sights were familiar on Jan. 29, as more than 7,000 people began jamming its floors for this year's three-day event.
Light the cool blue of a Pepsi can spilled down the curtains and walls shaping the boundaries of the messe, while bright white letters stood against the soft white arches and panels that separated services from banking and banking from retail. Most of the men and women alike conformed with traditional business wear standards. There were no gimmicky giveaways. There were no "booth babes" prowling in short skirts and high heels at the edges of the aisles. To a reporter accustomed to the loud, sometimes tawdry floor of U.S. trade shows, Wincor World seems more like a symposium, a high-dollar academic affair with really cool props.
Differences were few and, perhaps on the surface, misleadingly quiet.
First, and least, the company has invested more than $1 million in revamping the show location, planning at least three more years in it.
But more important, the technology, especially on the retail side of the house, seems bristling with innovation. The mood among Wincor Nixdorf officials would be ebullient, if the conservative culture of the company and its homeland embraced ebullience, even in the face of the company's sales and, commensurately, stock price increases. Over the last five years, the company's overall net sales have increased 10 percent, with strong growth from markets outside Germany. First-quarter sales for fiscal year 2007/2008 show that the company is staying the course. In Europe, first-quarter sales were up 15 percent. In Asia-Pacific and Africa, sales were up 14 percent. Sales were up 16 percent in the Americas.
And then there is the CEO, Eckard Heidloff, relaxed enough in his position to smile and move quickly through his meetings, comfortable enough to make quick jokes before the beginning of interviews. Introducing the Spanish president of Wincor's operations in the Americas, he quickly tweaked his response. "Not the president of America," he said. "But if you can have an Austrian governor, why not a Spanish president?"
On to more serious matters, Heidloff said Wincor Nixdorf International continues to rank Europe as its No. 1 region for business, but business in other markets is picking up.
"For us, Asia is as important as America," he said. "We are looking to Asia and the Americas for growth, but we are also looking at emerging markets. We now have two subsidiaries in emerging markets, in Russia and India."
And though Wincor's banking business continues to dominate the show, retail technology is attracting more attention. Restaurant, grocery and general retail offerings attracted greater attention than in years past, with a strong focus on overall cash management.
"On the banking side, we have end-to-end solutions," Heidloff said. "On the retail side, we have integrated store solutions. We are taking our experience from the banking side and applying it to retail applications and overall retail operations. In each segment, retail and banking, we have our multivendor software with a very open architecture, and that has been huge for us."
Just as the company strives on one level to evenly divide its business between retail and banking, on another it hopes to accomplish a 50/50 split between its hardware and software sales.
From fiscal year 1999/2000 to 2006/2007, Wincor Nixdorf has made strides toward closing the gap. Hardware sales, which seven years ago accounted for 67 percent of the company's overall business, now accounts for 58 percent. Software and services sales went from 33 percent to 42 percent during the same period.
That leveling may be attributed in some ways to improved U.S. sales, which Heidloff says the company expects to build upon, despite the relative weakness of the U.S. dollar.
"Sales in the U.S. have been up, but the numbers have been hurt by the weak (U.S.) dollar value," he said. "We expect (U.S.) banks to continue investing in our equipment and software, because we can improve efficiencies. We do not see any crisis coming, unless retail bankers cut their budgets by 50 percent."
Need for retail innovation
|
The Parallel Scan and Pay, where two shoppers can be processed at once. |
"Enhancing the customer experience will constantly be evolving," Heidloff said. "We see self-service being much more customized in the future, and we've developed a (modular) platform that can easily adapt to changing (customer) needs."Joachim Pinhammer, head of marketing for Wincor's retail division, says retailers, like bankers, are focusing more attention and investment on automation, self-service and overall cash management. With automated checkout solutions, which often eliminate or greatly reduce the need for retailers to handle cash, retailers can realize a return on their solution investments within 16 to 20 months.
"These are solutions that make the retail location more efficient," Pinhammer said. "With recycling technology, the pay tower (which separates payment from checkout) and the 360-degree scanner, 40 to 50 hours of working time can be saved per day."
On the retail side, the integration of self-service to complement some full-service applications will be the way of the future.
"I think in five, at the most 10, years, we will have dedicated self-service areas in all hypermarkets. That is what customers want," Pinhammer said. "But I do not think it will all be self-service; there will be a mix."
The technology
|
A card made with the card dispenser, on the spot, showing the template on the monitor and as realized via the machine. |
CARD DISPENSER. Wincor Nixdorf brought a prototype card-dispenser to the show. It can guide a user through the process of choosing a card layout, and print it with card numbers and the holder's name in minutes. Bank cards, credit cards, even library cards can be dispensed. The prototype, finished mere days before Wincor World, was surprisingly popular, according to a Wincor spokesman.REAL 360. Designed to speed up the process of going from shopping cart to the parking lot, the Real 360 is a combination of segmented conveyer belt and a short tunnel of scanners that automates the barcode reading of goods. Once a few late-generation prototypes bugs are worked out, ringing up a shopper's goods may take half as long. (Read additional coverage of the Real 360.)
PARALLEL SCAN AND PAY. Also designed to expedite the checkout process is a mix of full-service item scanning and customer self-service payment. Once a shopper has put his goods on the belt, a store employee scans them and rolls them down to the end of the line. There, the customer uses Wincor Nixdorf's iCASH cash-recycler to make payment and collect his purchases. The iCASH can be integrated simply into existing checkout islands from a hardware and, with TP.NET infrastructure, a software perspective.
RFID-TANGO. The problem solved by the RFID-Tango, a shopping cart that can keeping a running tally of goods and prices put into it, is called bulk reading. RFID chips broadcast their signal a thousand times a second. One reader attempting to comprehend several of them at once can get confused. (Imagine trying to listen to a dozen voices all coming at you at once.) The bulk-reading solution developed by Wincor Nixdor-partner Wanzel manages to tell voices to "shut up" when it has finished reading them. (Read additional coverage of the RFID-TANGO.)
TP.NET is the three-pronged approach developed by Wincor Nixdorf to manage multiple self-service components within a single- or multiunit retail operation. One aspect, TPEnterprise, controls activity at the store level. Another, TPAdmin, provides administration of several stores from a headquarters. The third component, TPAnalyze, provides business intelligence ranging from fraud detection to the success of individual sales campaigns and promotions.
Click here to see more pictures from the event. 
