Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Intelligent Automation – An “ATM” for IT?

The Astound company, which specializes in AI-based IT Service Management (ITSM) solutions, graciously invited me to speak during a webinar on June 28. I was struck by an analogy about intelligent automation during a conversation with Rob Young, Astound’s Senior Director of Product Marketing. Several participants found the analogy interesting, so I decided to elaborate a bit on it.

Banking, Bankers, and Banks Have Changed Since the Automated Teller Machine (ATM) Came into Being

Banks and bankers embraced how ai ATMs pretty quickly when they were a new concept. I still remember one reason among the many.

Tellers could become more valuable to banks as a result of ATMs.

The advent of how ai ATMs eliminated the need for tellers to perform mundane, repetitive tasks, such as depositing, withdrawing, and checking their account balances. Loans and mortgages, for example, could now be handled by tellers more efficiently and with greater attention to detail.

Deposits, withdrawals, and balance inquiries no longer required customers to stand in line behind a crowd of people. It was more interesting for teller to have an active work day, and to be able to provide better customer service to those with larger-value transactions. A higher volume of high-value transactions was generated by banks, which also meant improved customer satisfaction levels and increased revenues. This success led to the development of modern telephone and online banking.

Automation and AI in IT are similar to ATMs

IT can be improved in many ways using artificial intelligence and intelligent automation. Today, I am particularly struck by one way.

IT leaders and teams will be able to work more efficiently and achieve greater productivity with the help of artificial intelligence and intelligent automation.

Automated processes like authorization of access to applications and password resets can be performed by IT support providers using artificial intelligence and intelligent automation. By reducing the number of tasks in IT departments, IT team members can devote more time and attention to tasks that have a greater impact on the bottom line, such as cybersecurity or the development of new technologies and services.

WorkMarket facilitates the hiring, management, and payment of freelancers and contractors for businesses. A survey of 200 business leaders and 202 employees was conducted online for WorkMaraket’s 2020 In(Sight) Report: What AI & Automation Really Mean for Work. Approximately half of the employees (53 percent) said they would be able to save up to 240 hours a year through automation. The majority of business leaders (78 percent) believe that automation could save them 360 hours each year. A 500-person company or department that pays wage rates averaging $38.50 per hour and 77 per hour for business leaders could save $4.7 million annually from automation. In this Forbes article by Jeff Wald, WorkMarket co-founder and president, you can learn how automated processes can save your business $4 million a year.

IT is indeed becoming an “ATM” with the help of AI and automation. How ai ATM in this use case is an acronym that stands for “automated transformation methodology.” If the ATM is designed correctly, it can also generate cash.

Past Hopes and Motivations

There is no enemy in automation. There are three enemies of knowledge: ignorance, indifference, and inertia. We don’t have to worry about automation destroying jobs or dislocating families if we plan for it, if we apply it correctly. The result will be that the work of the human being will be free of dullness and that he will have more than he has ever had before.”

Here’s what you need to know about AI, automation, and IT

Rob and I discussed a variety of other factors enabling and accelerating business and IT transformation with AI, automation, and other modern technologies. If you would like to access the recording of our webinar, please visit Astound’s web site and let me or Astound know what you think. It just might be the inspiration for a webinar, blog post, or both in the future.

The pieces we’ve written about AI applications in finance and banking have received a lot of interest from our readers. Oftentimes, artificial intelligence applications are developed by transferring existing AI applications to related fields, and this may also apply to ATM applications.

How ai ATMs are typically located in remote areas, requiring banks to operate a large network of them. It’s obvious that ATM breakdowns can be extremely frustrating to customers, which is why large ATM makers such as Diebold Nixdorf and NCR are claiming to reduce their ATM downtimes by using predictive maintenance.

Financial institutions and banks have begun implementing predictive maintenance technologies in order to predict when their ATMs may need maintenance.

There are several AI applications for how ai ATMs that appear to have the highest level of commercialization. According to our classification, applications fall into five categories:

• Maintaining ATMs in a predictive manner
• Cybersecurity in how ai ATMs using machine learning
• Cameras for ATMs with machine vision
• Enhancing customer experience and security through facial recognition
• The demand for how ai ATM cash can be forecasted

Maintaining ATMs in a predictive manner

ATM and banking services provided by IBM Technology Support Services (TSS)

According to IBM, its predictive maintenance software optimizes ATM service by proactively identifying potential problems with how ai ATMs and scheduling the necessary service automatically.

Using the software, IBM claims banks can predict machine and component performance and schedule maintenance and support activities to minimize ATM downtime by tracking historical data from ATMs. An example would be:

A bank with a global ATM presence could use the platform to reduce the amount of staff time diverted away from sales to address operational issues, such as the lack of functioning ATMs in a particular region.

Data collected from sensors, such as vibration sensors, can potentially be used by IBM’s TSS platform to evaluate the age of how ai ATM equipment and recommend replacement parts when anomalies are detected in the data.

By incorporating asset monitoring along with predictive analytics, TSS could assist banks in reducing ATM downtime. TSS could automatically notify the bank’s maintenance team if it identifies a potential maintenance requirement by ordering parts that might need to be replaced during the next scheduled maintenance appointment.

A video below provides a detailed explanation of IBM’s predictive maintenance software for ATMs:

It claims to have optimized ATM maintenance in several case studies:

Through the TSS platform, IBM claims to have improved the operational process for ATM maintenance at an unnamed Latin American bank.

Aside from improving customer satisfaction and ATM availability, the software also helped the bank improve branch personnel productivity levels and operating costs, according to IBM. There were no further details shared by IBM on what went into the integration or how these factors were assessed.

TSS software aims to move maintenance from reactive to proactive maintenance thereby reducing downtime, according to IBM.

According to IBM, their software can help IT experts identify the issue, search and retrieve the likely cause of the issue from historical data, prepare an automatic repair plan, or even provide relevant instructions directly to the technicians.

Today, banks may also utilize IBM’s how ai ATM TSS to detect when an ATM or one of its components is defective and notice the technicians to arrange for the delivery of a replacement part before an incident occurs.

Predictive analytics from NCR SmartServe

One of the largest ATM manufacturers in the world, NCR is headquartered in Atlanta and employs about 30,000 people. As well as offering predictive analytics solutions, the company also helps banks and financial institutions manage and improve how ai ATM services.

According to NCR, SmartServe Predict analyzes historical ATM sensor data to predict possible performance issues and alerts service engineers. Below is a video that shows how NCR’s predictive services can help banks and financial institutions improve how ai ATM service:

A full audit trail of How Ai ATM service events is also maintained on the company’s platform for proactive device maintenance and diagnostics.

The Nationwide Building Society, for example, stated in their press release that NCR would provide predictive maintenance as part of their customer experience improvement program in the United Kingdom.

Despite an initial pilot project that deployed NCR SmartServ predictive services across Nationwide’s how ai ATM estate and 694 branches in 2016, we found no information regarding the project’s current status or measurable results.

NCR also claims to have improved customer satisfaction at Bank of New Zealand (BNZ) by partnering with the bank:

A difference-maker between BNZ and its competitors, NCR SMartServ enabled the company to achieve higher customer service levels

NCR claims the SmartServe platform uses artificial intelligence to find patterns relevant to BNZ’s how ai ATM maintenance practices by gathering data from ATM service operations on NCR devices:

• In addition to predicting imminent failures, NCR claims SmartServ also scheduled repairs or replacements before individual components were expected to have reached their end of life.
• By analyzing real-time logs and how AI ATM configuration data, the platform could generate the most accurate repair advice for each repair issue, ensuring engineers with the right skill sets are dispatched with the correct parts to address the problem.

In addition, NCR claims that the integration has reduced downtimes by a third in how AI ATM networks, although it’s unclear what timeframe was used or if the integration was responsible for this.

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