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 DELIVER AN EXCEPTIONAL CONSUMER BANKING EXPERIENCE 02 SUMMARY You could have the best ATM fleet in the business, performance, to a systems-wide view into how all equipped with a robust set of service offerings and the various ATM terminals, services, networks and multi-channel options. But without the ability to third party connections are responding along the manage the performance of your end-to-end ATM transaction path. A performance management network in a timely, cost effective manner, your strategy that combines deep dive ATM terminal consumer’s banking experience is still at risk of being performance metrics, transaction response times, and tainted by transaction performance issues. real-time analytics on the consumer experience is the key to cost effective management, timely problem We’ve all heard this story before. Something, resolution and consistent consumer service reliability. 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 This whitepaper will discuss: ++ an exceptional consumer banking experience ++ Operations teams tasked with delivering a telecommunications, EFT, or interbank connection. network communications issue? Regardless, the longer the guessing game goes on, the greater the impact on support costs, revenue generation and customer loyalty. The challenges and emerging performance management requirements of ATM and IT ATM service such as check imaging or bill pay, or a Perhaps it is your payments switch or an internal The growing motivation behind delivering 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 The growing importance of the consumer banking experience 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. 04 “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 “…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.” average hardware uptime between 98 and 99 percent, and transaction times that run less than 30 seconds. ATM Marketplace, 2011, “ATM Software Trends and Analysis 2011 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 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. How can you manage what you can’t see? As a result of growing ATM network complexity and Complex infrastructures and the constant roll-out of These are all things could have a negative impact on an increasing number of service offerings, ATM and IT new services and transaction protocols are making it revenues, support costs, and ultimately, the consumer Operations teams are realizing that, even if average challenging for ATM and IT Operations teams to keep banking experience. ATM hardware uptime is between 98 and 99 percent, up and continue delivering outstanding customer it is not enough information for them to confidently service in an efficient, cost-sensitive manner. Multi- Many existing tools such as ATM hardware monitoring answer the question, vendor ATMs, more service functionality and an solutions, deep-dive application performance increasing number of third party connections make management tools, network sniffers, log analyzers transaction performance issues harder to detect and and switch monitoring tools were not designed with isolate. Limited real-time performance visibility and monitoring complex, multi-service ATM network the inability to track the performance of end-to-end environments in mind. Dependency on these transactions once they leave the actual ATM terminal traditional tools will often translate into hours and are translating into: hours of manual labor to instrument devices and piece “How are my ATM services performing in the eyes of my consumers?” together fragmented information gathered across “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.” ++ ++ A greater risk of undetected network many internal departments and third party service communications and application performance providers. That makes it tough to avert customer issues affecting service availability service outages and quickly isolate incidents. A greater chance of third party hand-off issues occurring ++ Longer, more costly remediation processes and third party “blame storms” Ed O’Brien, Director of the Banking Channels Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group 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 Emerging performance management requirements for ATM and IT Operations ATM and IT Operations teams are primarily every individual ATM. The system should be able to make it easy to continuously monitor performance responsible for rolling out, continuously tell you if something’s broken, automatically diagnose across all ATM hardware, software and service monitoring and supporting the interoperability of the fault, tell you what to do to get it fixed, and when applications. By deploying performance management all the ATM terminals, services, switches, networks possible, fix it remotely or take care of tech dispatch. software that is complimentary to existing monitoring and third party connections that the completion Ideally, this system could also have the ability to accept tools, easily scalable and built to capture every of a consumer’s transaction depends on. To real-time transaction intelligence alerts on events transaction, regardless of what protocol type or what successfully do this in today’s ATM environments affecting the consumer experience, such as: customer touch point it originated from, ATM and IT requires a new level of real-time expertise…and new tools to make end-to-end management of Operations teams can: ++ the ATM network easier. Emerging performance management requirements Response time slowdowns of a host switch or service application ++ Avoid purchasing performance tool redundancies ++ Third party or interbank connection failures ++ Deploy a more operationally efficient and cost ++ Network communication errors 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 06 effective management solution ++ Access to transaction-derived metrics that support Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) Holistically manage the entire ATM estate and maximize uptime and performance ATM and transaction intelligence for incident The ability to query real-time consumer transaction data and ATM usage data management, trending and reporting purposes. They Isolating performance issues in a timely manner and are looking for easy access to real-time, transaction- ensuring that consumer’s transactions are completed derived metrics that can strengthen business impact hassle free requires ATM and IT Operations teams analysis and fault prioritization. This information will to have on-demand access to detailed transaction also compliment Key Performance Indicators such as intelligence. They need the ability to track ATM Availability, Incidents, Transactions, Unserved performance for thousands of transactions per second Customers and Cash Outages. across the entire ATM network, view this data by ATM and IT Operations teams need access to deeper customized groupings, and drill down into the details 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 of a single transaction at any time – all without the deployment of agents on the host switch, extra traffic loads or code changes. 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 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 why slowdowns or failures are occurring – anywhere along an end-to-end transaction path- such as: ++ 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 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. 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 VantageTM and NCR APTRATM 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 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. 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 Unlike traditional tools, BTM solutions such as cause a consumer’s transaction to slow down or fail. INETCO Insight were built to continuously monitor This is why the performance information ATM and IT the end-to-end performance of critical consumer Operations teams need to truly understand what the transactions running through complex, ever- consumer is experiencing is found “always on” the changing networks. They capture in-depth profiles wire. for every transaction, providing insight into network Business transaction management (BTM) solutions, communications, service application performance and commonly referred to as network-level transaction consumer experience. BTM solutions are proven to BTM solutions are the key to meeting emerging monitoring solutions, extend monitoring beyond the reduce support costs, increase network uptime and performance management requirements of ATM ATM to capture systems-wide information and hop availability, and improve the consumer experience by: and IT Operations teams tasked with delivering an by hop response times that detail how all the various services, host switch, EFT and interbank connections, 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 exceptional consumer experience. ++ and the underlying network infrastructure are performing. ++ ® Isolating issues affecting the performance of consumer transactions 65% faster ++ Averting service outages and improving first time call resolution rates “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 Producing real-time transaction intelligence alerts that can be automatically forwarded to incident management systems BTM solutions can be configured to provide real- All these consumer experience events can be reporting purposes. This data can be used to analyze time alert notifications on key events indicating automated to flow directly into ATM performance usage patterns for ATMs with different services a poor customer experience, such as slow management interfaces, such as NCR APTRA Vision enabled, measure adoption rates for new services, transactions, mid-stream cancellations, reversals, and Gasper Vantage, for an end-to-end view of ATM optimize screen flows, and track uptake on marketing failures of certain transaction types (e.g. bill network performance that will help ATM and IT campaigns. Historical transaction data can also be payment), and time-outs. Operations teams isolate and remediate transaction manipulated to discover customer trends and report performance issues in a timely, cost effective manner. on information such as: Examples of real-time transaction alerts include: ++ ++ A rise in transaction decline or reversal rates throughout the day by branch or geography for a certain BIN range or group of ATMs ++ ++ A rise in failed and “unsupported” transaction ++ connection, EFT connection or service used or card type ++ Ratio of third-party to own transactions Status codes and response code errors that are ++ Location profitability over X number of hours (or loss due to downtime) 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 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 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 10 A breakdown of traffic volumes based on services application linked to specific network (TCP disconnects or ++ Usability issues or intermittent problems at the self-service device rates by ATM terminal ID, card type, interbank ++ User frequency and how transaction volumes vary ++ 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 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. information. 11 ATM and IT Operations teams can also display consumer’s transaction passes through. By capturing transaction data within a variety of groups to quickly complete transaction messages and breaking down identify the source of business-impacting slowdowns, the round-trip transaction rate on a hop by hop basis, failures, or other anomalies that may be related to ATM and IT Operations teams can reduce blind spots fraudulent activity. Example interface groupings and identify infrastructure performance issues, service include: performance issues and unsuccessful hand-offs up to 65% faster. ++ 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) Find any individual transaction that was attempted ++ Transaction response times (authorization or in the last eight days, regardless of its status. You can completion rates, third party response times) even find attempted transactions that never have hit ++ Number of concurrent transactions the switch. ++ 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). 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 See transaction performance from a number of metric when it comes to isolating problems, especially vantage points. Construct a seamless picture of within complex ATM networks that may involve the complete transaction path to isolate problems software-as-a-service, mobile, virtual or Cloud-based affecting consumer experience 65% faster than infrastructures. This includes response times for the application log analyzers, network sniffers, switch ATM terminal, the host switch, any service application, monitoring tools and tracers and any third party or interbank connection that a 12 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 CONCLUSION Consumers care about three things: consistent service These are all things could have a negative impact on and a real-time window into key events that indicate quality, timely content or service delivery and security. revenues, support costs, and ultimately, the consumer a poor customer experience, such as slow transactions, If you cannot deliver on all of these, you run a higher banking experience. This is driving ATM and IT mid-stream cancellations, failures of certain risk of losing a customer’s trust and ultimately, their Operations teams to identify emerging performance transaction sets (e.g. bill payment), and time-outs. business. And this is why you need the ability, at management requirements for ATM and IT Operations Unlike traditional tools, BTM solutions were built to anytime, to answer the question, teams that include: continuously monitor the end-to-end performance of every consumer transaction that runs through a “How are my ATM services performing in the eyes of my consumers?” ++ Full automation of incident management complex, ever-changing network. BTM solutions are ++ Easy access to transaction-derived metrics to proven to reduce support costs, increase network support Key Performance Indicators uptime and availability, and improve the consumer But this is getting to be a difficult question to answer, ++ Consolidated performance management across experience by: due to the increasing complexity of ATM networks multi-vendor ATM hardware, software and service and the agility required by ATM and IT Operations applications 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 The ability to query real-time consumer transaction data and ATM usage data ++ ++ critical consumer transactions 65% faster ++ Visibility into the individual “hop by hop” response times of an end-to-end transaction path ++ Streamlining remediation processes, reducing dispatches and prioritizing incident faults ATM management solutions have advanced to ++ Averting service outages and improving first time call resolution rates ++ ATM terminal is translating into: ++ Isolating issues affecting the performance of your ++ Analyzing transaction volumes and the A greater risk of undetected network include automated end-to-end incident management, communications and application performance measures of consumer services and KPI’s, and the issues affecting service availability ability to deal with multi-vendor ATM hardware and A greater chance of third party hand-off issues software environments. All of this is usually delivered occurring through a web interface. In the case of NCR Gasper Together, a combined ATM and network-level Longer, more costly remediation processes and Vantage and APTRA Vision, these solutions have also transaction monitoring solution provides end-to-end third party “blame storms” made it possible to forward real-time transaction visibility that can be used to improve the consumer intelligence alerts gathered from the INETCO Insight experience and meet the emerging performance business transaction management (BTM) solution. management requirements for ATM and IT Operations breakdowns by service and transaction types ++ Performing analysis of consumer usage patterns and service adoption rates teams. 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 14 solutions provide granular transaction intelligence “[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.” 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 ATMIA Benchmarking Study and 2012 Industry Report 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 www.ncr.com 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 www.inetco.com 15 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 30096 . USA