Case studies in cost savings with keyless ATM and Branch Access Management

This is a true story about wasting time.

A European bank with 3,000 ATMs sends a service engineer to one of its remote locations to serve as keyholder during a 10 a.m. property maintenance visit by an alarm engineer.

The service employee's day begins at 9 a.m., but he doesn't have enough time to squeeze in another appointment before his appointment at the bank, so he travels to the designated ATM and waits for the alarm engineer to arrive.

Once the engineer arrives, the keyholder waits an additional two more hours while the engineer carries out his work. Finally, around noon, the keyholder can close the ATM and head off to his next assignment.

The service employee spent his morning waiting for someone to arrive, waiting for someone to do his job and then waiting again until he could finally close the ATM.

You don't have to be a Lean Six Sigma expert to know that this, "obviously not what could be called an effective use of working time."

As it happens, though, the person speaking these words, Robin Brinkerink, is a Lean Six Sigma black belt. During a webinar on June 11 entitled, "How ATM deployers are reaping significant cost savings and benefits with key-less ATM and Branch Access Management," he related the above true story, underscoring the inefficiencies of traditional ATM key management.

During the one-hour event, Brinkerink, who is a senior consultant with UPD, and a senior consultant and partner at Flowant Consultancy in the Netherlands, presented a pair of case studies performed for clients of TMD Security. This company offers keyless ATM and branch access management solutions which now provides these services to that same European bank in a proof-of-concept test.

Brinkerink was joined as a presenter on the June 11 webinar by Tom Moore, executive vice president and managing director for TMD Security in the Americas. Moore said that the keyless system offers the industry's first integrated access management solution — not only for the ATM top box and safe, but also for the ATM room and even the branch itself. "Any access point, in fact," he told the webinar audience.

The system employs a mobile- or PDA-based app that grants instant access to a designated technician or other ATM service person with a one-time encrypted code.

The OTC is sent by a secure dedicated server to the approved individual's mobile device. The code is then transmitted from the device to the lock via encrypted Bluetooth communications, entirely eliminating the need for a physical key.

User permissions and schedules are centrally managed in the Access Management server application, Moore said, ensuring that "the right person is at the right place at the right time before access is allowed."

In addition, he said, the server's dashboard facilitates:

• Remote addition or removal of personnel.
• Display of the status of all locks (including battery strength information and door-open alerts).
• A real-time audit trail for reporting and queries.

In her presentation during the webinar, Claire Shufflebotham, TMD Security global security director, outlined the unique benefits of keyless ATM and Branch Access Management, including timely and effective protection from the threat of COVID-19.

"A number of banks recently told us that their organizations are prioritizing any project or initiative that protects their employees and clients from the virus," she said. "Some of the concerns relating to COVID-19 are the risks of handling keys, meet-and-greets with keyholders, the need to visit key centers and the number of staff in a CIT team — sometimes up to four people, because of security regulations."

A keyless access management system eliminates these risks, Shufflebotham said. Additionally, the TMD solution facilitates heightened security, increased ATM availability and essential considerations of cost-efficiency, which UPD confirmed in business case analyses for TMD Security customers.

For instance, in the case of the European bank, UPD found that engineers spent 40% of their typical day on key-related activities, a source of understandable frustration for them and at considerable expense for the bank. A secure mobile-based key management solution might save 40% on both employee time and fuel costs.

Most likely, these costs are routinely underestimated, as indicated by a live poll conducted during the webinar. An audience comprised largely of bank staff in ATM roles guessed that switching from manual to keyless ATM access management would net cost savings of $1,000 to $1,500 per ATM, per year. In fact, TMD has found that client savings ranged from $1,500 to $6,000 per ATM, per year.

In the case of the European bank, UPD's analysis estimated savings of $5,371 per ATM per year with the TMD keyless solution. The consultancy determined that another TMD client based in the Middle East could save $1,790 per ATM, per year, with key-less ATM and Branch Access Management from TMD.

The UPD business case for the Middle East bank highlighted efficiencies that, following the implementation of keyless ATM access management, the institution is now realizing in four areas:

• Call center — ending the requirement for call center staff to provide one-time codes and receive close-seal notifications.
• Cash replenishment — eliminating the need for CIT carriers to contact the call center, an activity that previously accounted for 60% of the time required for a replenishment visit.
• Security — limiting the risk of unauthorized ATM access via lost, stolen or copied keys and introducing the added protection of a reliable real-time audit trail.
• Government compliance — ensuring compliance with the government's "four-eyes" requirement verification provided by an automated audit trail.

For TMD, the findings for customers in markets served by UPD has driven home the value of an independent business case analysis — and the importance of offering this capability to customers worldwide, Shufflebotham said.

To accommodate the need, TMD has entered into a global agreement with Deloitte that will provide a similar —free — service to customers not only in EMEA but also in Asia-Pacific, Canada, Latin America and the United States, she said. The service includes a business impact model, ROI that factors in any investment required for the solution and a report with a summary of all cost savings and benefits. TMD will offer the free service to 10 of its customers between now and the end of the year, according to Shufflebotham.

"Clients have told us this is the business justification they need for their C-level management — a strong and credible business case for change," she said.