A recent study from Accenture predicts that up to 48% of tasks in the financial services workforce could be augmented with technology by 2025 to increase productivity. Cash operations is one of the areas banks and credit unions should target when seeking these
productivity gains. Did you know modernizing your cash environment can yield new efficiencies and ultimately lead to better customer experiences in your branches? By eliminating manual cash handling processes, your financial institution can save time and labor and gain actionable insights; positively impacting profitability and customer engagement. If you already have cash automation in place, you can level-up your technology to generate even more efficiency gains.
You should consider:
How your current solution measures up to the latest innovations in the market
How the right solution can significantly reduce the cost of managing cash
Whether you're missing out on functionality your current solution already has
What's New With Branch Cash Automation?
The cash automation solutions of 5 to 10 years ago do not compare to what's available today. The software and hardware have come a long way. Earlier solutions were not designed with enterprise visibility and control functionalities in mind. Today's solutions can unify your cash network on one platform to create better oversight of cash operations throughout your branches.
As you plan to leverage this technology to help transform branch operations, here are a few features you should look for:
1. Ease of use and connectivity
For the best user experience, cash automation systems should connect with your teller application as well as the teller cash recyclers and other cash-handling devices throughout the branch network. With this connectivity, tellers should not have to initiate the cash automation application to complete a transaction. Instead, the application should trigger automatically, enabling the teller to stay focused on the customer as they follow simple prompts to complete the transaction quickly. State-of-the-art systems include pre-built workflows for routine cash transactions. For example, there are preset denominations to service customer withdrawals. There's also flexibility to provide notes according to customer preferences. Features like this help make every cash transaction efficient, so tellers or universal bankers have more time to service customers with additional products or solutions.
Advanced cash automation solutions can connect with nearly all teller cash recyclers and cash dispensers throughout your branch footprint, regardless of the manufacturer. This capability benefits:
Multi-vendor branches that want to achieve a consistent teller experience by eliminating the inefficiency of different workflows for different devices
Single-vendor branches that want more flexibility with a cash automation software that offers greater functionality
By giving your financial institution one source of truth for device performance and health, vendor agnostic solutions enable your financial institution to maximize its investment in cash handling devices.
2. Complete enterprise visibility
Modern cash automation solutions aggregate transaction data and device activity from across the enterprise to a central database repository. This feature makes it possible to monitor in near real time the cash position at each branch. As a result, regional and area branch managers can do their jobs more efficiently. With dashboard views of all the cash handling devices, they have the latest readout on the cash position of branches in their territory. They can receive alerts about unusual activities, such as large cash dispenses or emergency dispenses. These solutions also offer the ability to monitor key performance indicators and key activities at a glance.
3. Advanced reporting and analytic capabilities
With powerful reporting engines, advanced cash automation solutions give financial institutions access to detailed operational data that can be sorted and filtered to uncover trends and issues. This data-on-demand frees them from the tedium of spreadsheets and printed reports. As a result, regional branch managers and retail banking operations executives can make informed decisions about CIT planning, teller staffing, optimal cash on site, cash handling device performance and security oversight. IT and support team management can query data to access device performance by model, location, specific
device and more. COOs and operations managers are able to respond quickly to evolving personnel and device capacity statistics, as well as cash flow data needed for audits. CTOs and support leaders have access to hardware logs so they can drilldown into hardware errors by specific device/model or support tickets by user. This information would help them determine future investments and training plans. Risk and compliance officers see emergency dispense alerts and missing audits to optimize security and reduce risks. Within the branch, managers can assess teller performance and staffing needs.
4. Strategic user management features
Modern cash automation solutions let financial institutions give personnel customized dashboard views into cash handling activity. With the appropriate level of access to this valuable operational data, users can easily act on insights that are relevant to their domain. The solutions come with standard data queries; however, financial institutions can easily build custom queries for their unique environments.
Don’t Miss Out on Technological Advances
Today's cash automation solutions empower financial institutions to take greater command of branch operations--from the individual branch level to the entire branch network. With these solutions in place, financial institutions will have more time to pursue strategic goals.
If you're interested in exploring next-level cash automation solutions, reach out to us for a tour of the CashWare and CashWare Advisor solutions.
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