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Warm weather, hot technology at Wincor World

Group editor Joseph Grove is attending Wincor World 2004 in Paderborn, Germany, where each year Wincor Nixdorf presents some of its newest technologies for both the financial services and retail markets. Check in daily for a running commentary of his trip.

February 8, 2004

Editor's note: Joseph Grove is attending Wincor World 2004 in Paderborn, where each year Wincor Nixdorf presents some of its newest technologies for both the financial services and retail markets. Be sure to check in daily for a running commentary of his trip.

Feb. 3-Opening Day

PADERBORN, Germany - Wincor World"Communicating Visions" kicked off today inside Paderborn's massive Messezentrum Welle exhibition center. The building, squatting beside a two-lane urban street, is easily mistaken from the curb for the kind of drab warehouse where one might store rotting wood pallets or other goods of nominal value.

Inside, however, several steps beyond a registration counter and other amenities such as free Internet access from Intel, a cloakroom and gussied-up closets that suffice as press rooms, the warehouse takes on a different form; the show floor glows and hums with technology.

Lighting cast in varying shades and intensities of blue and burnt pink reflects from the silver of the technology, and the combined effect is hot -- both literally and figuratively. Relief can be found across the hall, where cool brick walls encircle a dining hall and, because this is Germany, a bar where a stream of beer flows all day long.

Is there something new at Wincor World this year? Yes, but don't ask Uwe Krause, head of marketing for show sponsor Wincor Nixdorf" banking division, whether the show is about innovation.

"Innovation is in the eye of the beholder," Krause says in a hastily arranged interview before the official start of the show. "Cash recycling is innovative in the U.S. now, but has been around in Germany for a long time."

He encourages me to watch for several "non-innovations" on display:

• Net-centric architecture, a new approach within Wincor World to eliminate problems relating to software standardization.
  
• CCD machines (cash and check depositing), which will enable users to deposit checks and immediately retrieve their cash. The technology will also enable small businesses to make deposits at the device instead of waiting in line at a teller window; cash-recycling ability can then immediately feed the cash in the deposit to ATM users.
  
• Biometric security devices.
  
• Wincor Nixdorf's new 2100XE all-in-one machine for cash withdrawal, money orders, cash acceptance, bar-code reading and other needs -- similar to the Vcom terminals deployed by 7-Eleven in the United States.

Of course, Krause says, what is "innovative" may be the standard in six months.

At the opening press conference, CEO Karl-Heinz Stiller describes the growth of the show from its original attendance of 100 people to more than 7,000 predicted this year. Also encouraging to him are Wincor's net sales rising 7 percent to €1.4 billion (U.S. $1.7 billion) in fiscal 2002/03, and EBITDA increasing 18 percent.

Stiller names several keys for the company's continued growth, including: growing the core business of providing self-service and point-of-sale solutions; taking advantage of market dilution; moving into new areas like lottery (the company has already placed its lottery kiosks in some Asian countries); continuing to expand globally; and increasing its consultancy activity.

Joachim Pinhammer, head of marketing for Wincor's retail division, says the Store Vision comprises three main objectives: friendly POS solutions, smart integration of store systems into enterprise systems, and increased store automation that results in improved customer service.

His division is showing RFID developments, Beetle iscan self-checkout machines and reverse vending devices for the acceptance of and compensation for recyclables.

Feb. 4-Day 2

At the end of the day, the second of Wincor World 2004's three, Wincor Nixdorf busses many of its several thousand guests to the Schützenhof Paderborn, a gun club of the type most German cities had at one time and which are now used for social gatherings and catered events.

As for me, I traveled there in a rented Audi turbo diesel. Joining my coworkers and me is a journalist from Singapore, a young reporter for The Asian Banker, whose extensive travels, not to mention her near-tropical upbringing, have deprived her of exposure to snow. She had never seen the stuff, and had hoped her trip to Germany would finally allow her to numb her fingers in white.

Sadly, it was not to be. Although the week before Wincor World a snow storm had come through and frosted Paderborn, the weather now is warm, almost too. Rain has fallen nearly every day, increasing the grip of the humid, 50-plus degree air.

Inside the Schützenhof, two banquet halls were reserved under the name Wincor World. Long lines of tables sat steaming and fragrant against the walls, and the dimmed lights above them sparkled against the glasses of beer and wine radiating in all directions from the bar.

A band best described as multi-cultural -- a black Jamaican woman fronting for white German men playing American hits old enough to have debuted on disc and vinyl at the same time -- brought a couple of attendees to their feet to dance, which would have been less noteworthy had they not been atop their table when the dancing commenced.

The highlight of the night -- from which I was regrettably and prematurely taken away by our paternalistic vice president of sales and marketing -- was a troupe of Cuban percussionists, dancers and acrobats who took the stage periodically through the night. The provocative moves and scant costumes of the women in the troupe were enthralling. At least to some people. From what I've heard.

While I could not help my colleague in the foreign press with her snow, we would both have to agree we have been blanketed in news. Wincor Nixdorf is busy, and they are anxious to share with us the nature of the activity.

Deal with Barclays. Wincor officially announced the signing of a five-year contract that transfers the management and maintenance of Barclays' ATM network to Wincor Nixdorf. The contract, commencing in spring, covers 3,900 UK ATMs owned by Barclays and its Woolwich subsidiary and will be run from Wincor's new call center in Dartford, Kent.

Retail recycling technology. Recycling is still not present in some U.S. states, but it's a way of life in greener-than-green Europe. Wincor Nixdorf's "empties control" is a modular software that administers retail reverse vending systems and allows the systems to be customized to meet market demands and easily connected to existing IT systems. A further module includes a complete merchandise management system for storage of empties.

New generation of account service terminals. The company is presenting a new, more powerful generation of terminals characterized by 32-bit architecture, which increases speed and power by 10 percent over the old machines. Banking customers can now get their bank statements -- currently representing the bulk of work done by account service terminals -- more quickly.

Cryptographic procedure that guards against virus consequences. Wincor has developed a cryptographic procedure to prevent unauthorized ATM withdrawals caused by viruses. Its SCOP (Secure Cash Out Procedure), a first-of-its-kind product, ensures that Trojan viruses, now more of a concern for self-service terminals connected to the Internet, do not trigger any non-permissible withdrawals within the ATM's control module.

Feb. 5-Day 3

Today, the show wraps, and everywhere are faces expressing a recognizable though seldom seen mixture of fatigue and glee. You see them not only on the men and women who have sweated for three days now behind ATMs and kiosks on the sweltering show floor; even the fast, adroit workers managing the flow of beer and coffee seem to sense the end.

His aides say CEO Karl-Heinz Stiller has received very positive feedback about Wincor World 2004, especially from the all-important customers, and the thumbs-up-spreading quickly as the day and the event come to a close, when shuttles jam the exit drives and the first sounds of frenetic disassembly break from the various booths-means Wincor folks can go home tired but satisfied.

Final figures have not been released on attendance, but if attendance fell short of the expected 7,000, one could not have so discerned from walking the floor or eating in the dining area. Every area was at all times crowded, and if the show expects to continue to grow, a larger facility may be required, or a split into different parts of the world.

Adding to the pace today is the presence of about 500 attendees of German's Retail Innovation Day, held this time not in Düsseldorf but in Paderborn as part of Wincor World, and it has brought an international public from the retail, banking and IT worlds, and as such the program was to deal in particular with the interconnections among those industries. Also on schedule are discussions about innovations in human resources management, engineering and technology, logistics and organization.

With approximately five million employees and a share of gross added value of some 10 percent, retailing is an important engine for the economy and employment in Germany. The Retail Innovation Day has developed over the past years intone one of the leading events in this sector. It has become a meeting place for top managers in the industry and a forum for new ideas and impulses.

Before heading out, I have final interviews with Uwe Krause and Joachim Pinhammer, who head up marketing for Wincor Nixdorf's banking and retail sides, respectively, and a significant discussion with two individuals about a topic I can't share here. CEO Stiller and I chat briefly before he barrels up the autobahn to a speaking engagement unrelated to his fair.

Over the next couple of weeks, check back either here or on the site's Tradeshows and Events page for the final round-up and a slideshow.