News

Is channel integration finally ready for its close-up?

April 18, 2004

Both financial institutions and their customers seem to want better channel integration. Yet efforts to date have been pretty lackluster, especially where ATMs are involved.

Previous integration attempts have been incomplete, said Brian Adrain, a senior research analyst for consulting firm Gartner, Inc. While 50 percent of FIs share customer profile data across channels, only 13 percent offer actual cross-channel interaction."They haven't drilled down deeply enough into actual applications and services," he said.

In an ideally integrated world, Adrain said, a consumer who placed a query about a missing check via a telephone banking system could, while using the ATM, receive a message that it had been located.

Despite the ATM's popularity with consumers, it's rarely been a part of FIs' channel integration efforts, Adrain said. Few FIs have used applications from third-party providers at ATMs, and many cling to the concept of offering an identical set of capabilities at all machines.

Adrain encourages FIs to focus on creating different menus of services for their machines, based on geography, site venue and customer demographics. "An ATM at a sports arena is going to be different than an ATM at a branch," he said.

"Integrating ATMs with their channels is a major challenge for FIs because of the lack of back-office infrastructure for the ATM channel," said Tyson Nargassans, VP, Sales and Marketing at e-Classic Systems, maker of ATM Manager Pro ATM channel management software. "Other distribution channels have centralized channel systems to manage performance and integrate with other areas. ATMs have been forgotten in this area; as a result, individual systems are implemented to solve specific department or user issues, leaving a void in ATM channel management and significantly decreasing its opportunity for integration."

As another example of possible integration, Adrain said FIs could leverage purchasing information stored on a customer's ATM/debit card. So when a customer who had recently purchased a DVD player swiped his card at a mall ATM, he might receive coupons for free rentals or similar offers.

Such offers could result in increased card usage as well as customer loyalty, he said.

His tips:

And, Nargassans added, build the back-office systems necessary to support channel integration with ATMs.