THINKING. beyond the ATM: How end-to-end transaction visibility improves the consumer experience

Transcription

1 THINKING beyond the ATM: How end-to-end transaction visibility improves the consumer experience Authors: Robert Johnston, Marketing Director of ATM Software at NCR Stacy Gorkoff, VP of Strategic Marketing at INETCO

2 02 DELIVER AN EXCEPTIONAL CONSUMER BANKING EXPERIENCE

3 SUMMARY You could have the best ATM fleet in the business, equipped with a robust set of service offerings and multi-channel options. But without the ability to manage the performance of your end-to-end ATM network in a timely, cost effective manner, your consumer s banking experience is still at risk of being tainted by transaction performance issues. We ve all heard this story before. Something, somewhere, on your ATM network is causing your end-customer s transactions to slow down or fail, but you don t know where the issue is. Sometimes you don t know how long the problem has existed for, how many transactions are being affected, or whether the problem is related to a specific ATM terminal, an ATM service such as check imaging or bill pay, or a telecommunications, EFT, or interbank connection. Perhaps it is your payments switch or an internal network communications issue? Regardless, the longer the guessing game goes on, the greater the impact on support costs, revenue generation and customer loyalty. performance, to a systems-wide view into how all the various ATM terminals, services, networks and third party connections are responding along the transaction path. A performance management strategy that combines deep dive ATM terminal performance metrics, transaction response times, and real-time analytics on the consumer experience is the key to cost effective management, timely problem resolution and consistent consumer service reliability. This whitepaper will discuss: + + The growing motivation behind delivering an exceptional consumer banking experience + + The challenges and emerging performance management requirements of ATM and IT Operations teams tasked with delivering a consistent consumer banking experience + + How a combined ATM and business transaction management solution provides the end-to-end visibility needed to address emerging performance management requirements and improve the consumer experience. A business transaction management (BTM) solution, coupled with your ATM management tool, is the most effective way for ATM and IT Operations teams to work together and meet these challenges head on. BTM solutions, also commonly referred to as network-level transaction monitoring solutions, extend monitoring beyond physical ATM terminal 03

4 The growing importance of the consumer banking experience 04 The banking industry has been undergoing a huge transformation due to the recent global financial crisis. Low interest rates and an increasing regulatory burden are squeezing margins. Customer loyalty is now more critical to profitability and long-term growth than ever before. This is why many banks are interested in investing in new technologies that will help them to: + + Increase operational efficiency + + Holistically manage multi-service and multichannel banking environments + + Obtain data that provides a deeper understanding of the consumer experience, segmentation and channel usage The consumer s behavior and perception of financial services has also changed. Trust and confidence has declined, meaning banks have to work harder to improve their trusted brand perception. Values have been redefined in terms of transparency, simplicity and feedback, largely due to social media. The majority prefer interacting with customer-facing applications, such as ATM terminals, mobile phone applications or online banking options, versus the traditional branch teller. Expectations around security, accessibility and timely delivery of services continue to grow, making customer-centric value propositions and exceptional customer service delivery a top priority, and differentiator, for many banks. How are my ATM services performing in the eyes of my consumers? When it comes to ATM networks, much of the delay time in ATM transactions was traditionally trimmed out by fine tuning the terminal mechanisms and software. In fact, some US networks today report average hardware uptime between 98 and 99 percent, and transaction times that run less than 30 seconds. Consumers expect their transactions to complete without issues. But in today s ATM environments, hardware uptime may not be enough to guarantee ATM transaction times. There are a growing number of areas within the end-to-end ATM network infrastructure where performance issues can cause a consumer s transaction to fail or slow down. Critical payment and service transactions are now running through increasingly complex application and security architectures involving mobile, virtual, Cloud or software-as-a-service. The performance of multi-vendor ATM terminals, multi-functional service applications and a growing number of third party switch, telecommunications, EFT and interbank connections are all critical factors in delivering consistent service and meeting customer satisfaction. Today s ever-changing ATM environments also require ATM and IT Operations teams to be more agile when it comes to managing the performance of multiple services at the ATM. Banks that are trying to differentiate themselves and keep up with consumer expectations are continuously rolling out new security applications and value-added service functionality such as bill pay, advertising, appointment a more recent survey of ATM operators found that 70% saw the ATM becoming more important or much more important as a customer touchpoint in the future. ATM Marketplace, 2011, ATM Software Trends and Analysis 2011 booking, EMV, intelligent deposit, check imaging, mobile transaction staging, machine-to-machine transfers, mobile top-offs, and prepaid card sales. Many banks are also expanding telecommunications, EFT and interbank connections support on the backend. These new services and expanding third party interoperability connections are driving more change and a greater number of consumer transactions through ATM networks than ever before.

5 How can you manage what you can t see? As a result of growing ATM network complexity and an increasing number of service offerings, ATM and IT Operations teams are realizing that, even if average ATM hardware uptime is between 98 and 99 percent, it is not enough information for them to confidently answer the question, How are my ATM services performing in the eyes of my consumers? With the new technology and new processes, the ATM channel is kind of the staid old boring channel no longer. It provides opportunities for financial institutions that they haven t seen in 40 years. Ed O Brien, Director of the Banking Channels Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group Complex infrastructures and the constant roll-out of new services and transaction protocols are making it challenging for ATM and IT Operations teams to keep up and continue delivering outstanding customer service in an efficient, cost-sensitive manner. Multivendor ATMs, more service functionality and an increasing number of third party connections make transaction performance issues harder to detect and isolate. Limited real-time performance visibility and the inability to track the performance of end-to-end transactions once they leave the actual ATM terminal are translating into: + + A greater risk of undetected network communications and application performance issues affecting service availability + + A greater chance of third party hand-off issues occurring + + Longer, more costly remediation processes and third party blame storms These are all things could have a negative impact on revenues, support costs, and ultimately, the consumer banking experience. Many existing tools such as ATM hardware monitoring solutions, deep-dive application performance management tools, network sniffers, log analyzers and switch monitoring tools were not designed with monitoring complex, multi-service ATM network environments in mind. Dependency on these traditional tools will often translate into hours and hours of manual labor to instrument devices and piece together fragmented information gathered across many internal departments and third party service providers. That makes it tough to avert customer service outages and quickly isolate incidents. ATM Network Complexity - The consumer experience is dependent not only on the start and end points of a transaction, but on the performance of all the applications and systems touched by their transaction. 05

6 Emerging performance management requirements for ATM and IT Operations 06 ATM and IT Operations teams are primarily responsible for rolling out, continuously monitoring and supporting the interoperability of all the ATM terminals, services, switches, networks and third party connections that the completion of a consumer s transaction depends on. To successfully do this in today s ATM environments requires a new level of real-time expertise and new tools to make end-to-end management of the ATM network easier. Emerging performance management requirements for ATM and IT Operations teams include: + + Full automation of incident management + + Easy access to transaction-derived metrics that support Key Performance Indicators + + Consolidated performance management across multi-vendor ATM hardware, software and service applications + + The ability to query real-time consumer transaction data and ATM usage data + + Visibility into the individual hop by hop response times of an end-to-end transaction path Full automation of incident management To isolate and remediate transaction performance issues in a timely, cost effective manner, ATM and IT operations teams require an incident management system that will automatically pick up and analyze the fault status code changes of every individual ATM. The system should be able to tell you if something s broken, automatically diagnose the fault, tell you what to do to get it fixed, and when possible, fix it remotely or take care of tech dispatch. Ideally, this system could also have the ability to accept real-time transaction intelligence alerts on events affecting the consumer experience, such as: + + Response time slowdowns of a host switch or service application + + Third party or interbank connection failures + + Network communication errors Access to transaction-derived metrics that support Key Performance Indicators (KPI s) ATM and IT Operations teams need access to deeper ATM and transaction intelligence for incident management, trending and reporting purposes. They are looking for easy access to real-time, transactionderived metrics that can strengthen business impact analysis and fault prioritization. This information will also compliment Key Performance Indicators such as ATM Availability, Incidents, Transactions, Unserved Customers and Cash Outages. Consolidated performance management across multi-vendor ATM hardware, software and service applications The majority of banks have already adopted both multi-vendor and multi-service ATM strategies. This means ATM and IT Operations need performance management solutions that are vendor agnostic and make it easy to continuously monitor performance across all ATM hardware, software and service applications. By deploying performance management software that is complimentary to existing monitoring tools, easily scalable and built to capture every transaction, regardless of what protocol type or what customer touch point it originated from, ATM and IT Operations teams can: + + Avoid purchasing performance tool redundancies + + Deploy a more operationally efficient and cost effective management solution + + Holistically manage the entire ATM estate and maximize uptime and performance The ability to query real-time consumer transaction data and ATM usage data Isolating performance issues in a timely manner and ensuring that consumer s transactions are completed hassle free requires ATM and IT Operations teams to have on-demand access to detailed transaction intelligence. They need the ability to track performance for thousands of transactions per second across the entire ATM network, view this data by customized groupings, and drill down into the details of a single transaction at any time all without the deployment of agents on the host switch, extra traffic loads or code changes.

7 Visibility into the individual hop by hop response times of an end-to-end transaction path Transaction response times offer ATM and IT Operations the ability to manage consumer transactions and service response times through increasingly complex ATM networks that may involve software-as-a-service, mobile, virtual or cloud-based infrastructures. By capturing complete transaction messages and breaking down the round-trip transaction rate on a hop by hop basis, it becomes easier and more efficient to isolate exactly where and why slowdowns or failures are occurring anywhere along an end-to-end transaction path- such as: A performance management strategy that can produce multi-vendor ATM performance metrics, multi-service response times, and real-time analytics on the consumer experience is the key to cost effective management, timely problem resolution and consistent consumer service reliability. A combined ATM management and business transaction management (BTM) solution is a proven way to obtain the end-to-end visibility and in-depth transaction intelligence required by ATM and IT Operations teams to manage complex, ever-changing ATM network environments. One of the most common and damaging faults in ATM networks is connection slowdown, whereby the terminal experiences problems with, or loses entirely, its connection with whichever switching connectivity provider it is using. ATMIA Benchmarking Study and 2012 Industry Report + + Infrastructure performance issues Are there bottlenecks or communication issues on the network? + + Service performance issues Are there certain online banking services, mobile services or other services offered through your ATM that are either slow to respond or not responding at all? + + Unsuccessful hand-offs Is there an issue with one of your customer facing device interfaces, the host switch, third party service providers, telecommunications network providers, interbank or EFT connections? 07

8 Using the intelligence harnessed by your ATM performance management tool to improve the consumer banking experience Providing full automation of incident management Many deep-dive ATM performance management tools are being designed to support full automation of incident management. Incident alerts are generated based on thousands of status codes that ATM devices generate. These tools help ATM and IT Operations quickly isolate faults at the ATM, ensure maximum operational efficiency and deliver a positive consumer experience through improved first dispatch resolution rates, streamlined helpdesk support and ATM operations processes, and achieving maximum ATM uptime. The APTRA Vision system also tracks ATM fleet inventory and software distribution, and provides a customizable user interface for tracking other KPI s that relate to the consumer experience (including ATM Availability, Incidents, Transactions, and Cash Outages), trending graphs and a breakdown of the transaction types that could not be delivered. In the case of NCR Gasper Vantage and APTRA Vision, these solutions have also made it possible to forward real-time transaction intelligence alerts gathered from the INETCO Insight business transaction management solution. Consolidating performance management across multi-vendor ATM hardware and software In addition to deep dive performance management metrics for multi-vendor ATM hardware and software, the newest versions of ATM performance management tools such as NCR Gasper Vantage TM and NCR APTRA TM Vision are providing more information about the consumer experience. For example, APTRA Vision is able to calculate how many consumers were turned away as the result of an ATM being unavailable, displaying this as a Key Performance Indicator (KPI) metric called Unserved Customers. 08

9 Using the real-time transaction intelligence harnessed by your BTM tool to improve the consumer banking experience There is a lot going on at the network level that can cause a consumer s transaction to slow down or fail. This is why the performance information ATM and IT Operations teams need to truly understand what the consumer is experiencing is found always on the wire. Business transaction management (BTM) solutions, commonly referred to as network-level transaction monitoring solutions, extend monitoring beyond the ATM to capture systems-wide information and hop by hop response times that detail how all the various services, host switch, EFT and interbank connections, and the underlying network infrastructure are performing. Unlike traditional tools, BTM solutions such as INETCO Insight were built to continuously monitor the end-to-end performance of critical consumer transactions running through complex, everchanging networks. They capture in-depth profiles for every transaction, providing insight into network communications, service application performance and consumer experience. BTM solutions are proven to reduce support costs, increase network uptime and availability, and improve the consumer experience by: + + Isolating issues affecting the performance of consumer transactions 65% faster + + Averting service outages and improving first time call resolution rates + + Streamlining remediation processes, reducing dispatches and prioritizing incident faults + + Analyzing transaction volumes and the breakdowns by service and transaction types + + Performing analysis of consumer usage patterns and service adoption rates BTM solutions are the key to meeting emerging performance management requirements of ATM and IT Operations teams tasked with delivering an exceptional consumer experience. Transaction profiling is a powerful dimension of application performance monitoring, but it hasn t always been the easiest technology to deploy and configure due to its overhead and complexity when dealing with multi-tiered applications. A no-touch, network-based transaction profiling approach overcomes some of these barriers, making transaction performance more easily accessible to a broader base of organizations. Jonah Kowall, Research Director at Gartner Inc. and Co-Author of the APM Magic Quadrant 09

10 Producing real-time transaction intelligence alerts that can be automatically forwarded to incident management systems BTM solutions can be configured to provide realtime alert notifications on key events indicating a poor customer experience, such as slow transactions, mid-stream cancellations, reversals, failures of certain transaction types (e.g. bill payment), and time-outs. Examples of real-time transaction alerts include: + + A rise in transaction decline or reversal rates for a certain BIN range or group of ATMs + + A rise in failed and unsupported transaction rates by ATM terminal ID, card type, interbank connection, EFT connection or service application + + Status codes and response code errors that are linked to specific network (TCP disconnects or MAC errors), host switch, interbank connection or service issue + + Specific ATM terminal, host switch, or third party service response slowdowns or failures by ATM device, switch, service, EFT network, or bank authorization + + Transaction trending and traffic profile breakdowns to compare transactions by capacity thresholds, card types, services, ratio of third party to own transactions All these consumer experience events can be automated to flow directly into ATM performance management interfaces, such as NCR APTRA Vision and Gasper Vantage, for an end-to-end view of ATM network performance that will help ATM and IT Operations teams isolate and remediate transaction performance issues in a timely, cost effective manner. Quickly isolate network communications issues, service level violations, transaction slowdowns and failures with real-time events based alerting capabilities. Making it easy to access transaction-derived metrics that support Key Performance Indicators reporting purposes. This data can be used to analyze usage patterns for ATMs with different services enabled, measure adoption rates for new services, optimize screen flows, and track uptake on marketing campaigns. Historical transaction data can also be manipulated to discover customer trends and report on information such as: + + User frequency and how transaction volumes vary throughout the day by branch or geography + + Usability issues or intermittent problems at the self-service device + + A breakdown of traffic volumes based on services used or card type + + Ratio of third-party to own transactions + + Location profitability over X number of hours (or loss due to downtime) 10 BTM solutions make it easy for ATM and IT Operations teams to build a comprehensive database of every interaction a consumer has with an ATM, and use this historical data for incident management, trending and

11 + + Capturing response codes and accounting for every transaction - Expand your view of withdrawals and deposit transactions to include a break down in the number of reversed, failed, unsupported and service transactions + + Reducing the number of Unserved Customers - Alert to slow transaction response times and proactively isolate problems within ATM environments, multiple application services, EFT networks and banking connections before they impact the end customer experience Build customizable, real-time graphs to quickly analyze transaction traffic patterns, trends, services application behaviour and network communications issues. Answer common questions about performance instantly. Examples of how Key Performance Indicators can be enhanced by transaction-derived metrics include: + + Seeing beyond ATM Availability - Monitor and break down transaction traffic by bank cards, branch location, ATM terminal ID s, service channels, card type, switch routing or EFT network without touching the host switch, increasing traffic load or deploying agents + + Relating Incidents back to revenue and endcustomer experience - Improve business impact analysis and prioritize faults based on a deeper understanding of traffic patterns and revenue generation Consolidating performance management across multi-vendor ATM hardware, software and agile service offerings Complimentary to existing ATM management tools, BTM solutions were built to easily scale and capture every consumer transaction, regardless of what protocol type or what customer touch point it originated from. BTM solutions provide an end-to-end, systems-wide view into ATM network interoperability, including multi-vendor ATM hardware and software, multiple security and service applications, third party service connections, and back-end banking connections all from one monitoring platform. A common window into the end-to-end performance of all ATMs, services, network communications and third party connections leads to faster problem isolation while reducing performance tool redundancies, support costs and the hours spent in blamestorm sessions and piecing together fragmented information. Group real-time transactions by card types, devices or service type (such as ATM or POS devices), terminal ID s, or geographic regions. Configure custom dashboards for different users and roles. Providing the ability to query real-time consumer transaction data and ATM usage data Most BTM solutions also come with robust query capabilities that allow ATM and IT Operations teams to gain high level views and on-demand access to granular transaction intelligence captured in the transaction logs. These real-time query capabilities help ATM and IT Operations teams speed up the isolation of performance issues on the ATM network and determine immediately if a consumer s transaction is performing as expected - all without deploying agents, adding traffic loads or writing code changes. 11

12 ATM and IT Operations teams can also display transaction data within a variety of groups to quickly identify the source of business-impacting slowdowns, failures, or other anomalies that may be related to fraudulent activity. Example interface groupings include: + + Service type (deposit, bill payment, check imaging, mobile, etc.) + + Source (Terminal ID, geography or branch location) + + Transaction rates (number of errors, completed, failed, declined transactions) + + Transaction amounts (dollar amounts) + + Transaction response times (authorization or completion rates, third party response times) + + Number of concurrent transactions + + Volume ratios between various transaction groups (number of third party vs own transactions, card types, EFT connections, host switches, or ATM vendors) + + Types of transactions (withdrawals, deposits, reversals, incomplete, etc). Find any individual transaction that was attempted in the last eight days, regardless of its status. You can even find attempted transactions that never have hit the switch. Visibility into hop by hop response times of an end-to-end transaction path BTM solutions capture and correlate the response times of every critical component found on the endto-end transaction path. Response times are a critical metric when it comes to isolating problems, especially within complex ATM networks that may involve software-as-a-service, mobile, virtual or Cloud-based infrastructures. This includes response times for the ATM terminal, the host switch, any service application, and any third party or interbank connection that a consumer s transaction passes through. By capturing complete transaction messages and breaking down the round-trip transaction rate on a hop by hop basis, ATM and IT Operations teams can reduce blind spots and identify infrastructure performance issues, service performance issues and unsuccessful hand-offs up to 65% faster. See transaction performance from a number of vantage points. Construct a seamless picture of the complete transaction path to isolate problems affecting consumer experience 65% faster than application log analyzers, network sniffers, switch monitoring tools and tracers 12

13 Deploying BTM within your ATM network environment - without touching the switch In the past two years, we have seen business transaction management (BTM) technologies make significant progress in terms of deployment and data gathering techniques. As a result, BTM has become the fastest growing segment of application performance management (APM) tools today. Typically, the new lightweight BTM tools are faster to deploy than traditional BTM solutions and also simpler to maintain. That makes it easy to adopt this critical dimension of real-time transaction monitoring and service reliability management. Lightweight BTM solutions passively monitor real-time traffic at the network level meaning it does not touch the payments switch, or require the deployment of any agents, overhead traffic, transaction tagging or code changes. Lightweight BTM approaches tend to be vendoragnostic and architected to capture any transaction protocol type, from any consumer facing application or device interface. This means that the solution can be easily scaled to provide real-time network-level transaction monitoring across all consumer facing channels, services and multi-vendor self-service terminals. See how the INETCO Insight network-based transaction monitoring solution can be deployed within an ATM network environment, without having to touch the switch, deploy intrusive agents or modify any application code. 13

14 CONCLUSION 14 Consumers care about three things: consistent service quality, timely content or service delivery and security. If you cannot deliver on all of these, you run a higher risk of losing a customer s trust and ultimately, their business. And this is why you need the ability, at anytime, to answer the question, How are my ATM services performing in the eyes of my consumers? But this is getting to be a difficult question to answer, due to the increasing complexity of ATM networks and the agility required by ATM and IT Operations teams to manage the performance of service offerings continuously being rolled out by their banks. The inability to track the performance of all your consumer s transactions once they leave the actual ATM terminal is translating into: + + A greater risk of undetected network communications and application performance issues affecting service availability + + A greater chance of third party hand-off issues occurring + + Longer, more costly remediation processes and third party blame storms These are all things could have a negative impact on revenues, support costs, and ultimately, the consumer banking experience. This is driving ATM and IT Operations teams to identify emerging performance management requirements for ATM and IT Operations teams that include: + + Full automation of incident management + + Easy access to transaction-derived metrics to support Key Performance Indicators + + Consolidated performance management across multi-vendor ATM hardware, software and service applications + + The ability to query real-time consumer transaction data and ATM usage data + + Visibility into the individual hop by hop response times of an end-to-end transaction path ATM management solutions have advanced to include automated end-to-end incident management, measures of consumer services and KPI s, and the ability to deal with multi-vendor ATM hardware and software environments. All of this is usually delivered through a web interface. In the case of NCR Gasper Vantage and APTRA Vision, these solutions have also made it possible to forward real-time transaction intelligence alerts gathered from the INETCO Insight business transaction management (BTM) solution. BTM solutions have also advanced to a point where they are now lightweight, easy to scale and easy to deploy. These network-level transaction monitoring solutions provide granular transaction intelligence and a real-time window into key events that indicate a poor customer experience, such as slow transactions, mid-stream cancellations, failures of certain transaction sets (e.g. bill payment), and time-outs. Unlike traditional tools, BTM solutions were built to continuously monitor the end-to-end performance of every consumer transaction that runs through a complex, ever-changing network. BTM solutions are proven to reduce support costs, increase network uptime and availability, and improve the consumer experience by: + + Isolating issues affecting the performance of your critical consumer transactions 65% faster + + Averting service outages and improving first time call resolution rates + + Streamlining remediation processes, reducing dispatches and prioritizing incident faults + + Analyzing transaction volumes and the breakdowns by service and transaction types + + Performing analysis of consumer usage patterns and service adoption rates Together, a combined ATM and network-level transaction monitoring solution provides end-to-end visibility that can be used to improve the consumer experience and meet the emerging performance management requirements for ATM and IT Operations teams.

15 [the 2012 ATMIA benchmarking study] found a relationship between more frequent and accurate monitoring and better network performance (downtime/uptime) and pointed towards a potential association between a more detailed approach to performance management and lower operating costs, cash management and transaction processing costs in particular. ATMIA Benchmarking Study and 2012 Industry Report About NCR Gasper Vantage and APTRA Vision NCR Gasper Vantage is the most used ATM incident management system in the industry. It delivers end-to-end incident management automation and is highly configurable to suit individual ATM deployers business rules and operational preferences. Gasper Vantage delivers significant benefits in terms of increased ATM availability and improved helpdesk productivity. NCR APTRA Vision is a next generation of self service management system that unlocks the data in the incident management system and presents it as valuable management information through a web based interface. It includes measures of consumer service, location information, and facilities to track self service inventory and distribute software. For more information, visit About INETCO Insight INETCO Insight is a lightweight business transaction management solution that helps ATM and IT Operations teams reduce support costs, increase network uptime and availability, and improve the consumer experience. The software is vendoragnostic and can be easily scaled to detect transaction bottlenecks and failures across complex ATM and multi-channel banking environments. INETCO Insight passively monitors real-time transaction performance at the network level meaning it does not touch the payments switch, or require the deployment of any agents, transaction tagging or code changes. For more information, visit 15

16 Why NCR? With over 125 years of experience and knowledge, NCR is a leading global provider of payments, assisted- and self-service solutions. NCR has been the global number one manufacturer of ATMs for more than 22 consecutive years. We help our clients around the world improve their customer interactions, implement change quickly and proactively, and transform their businesses to become leaders and change agents. We can help you, too. NCR Corporation 3097 Satellite Boulevard. Duluth, Georgia USA