Smart phones lift bank ATM service
Krung Thai Bank has been able to improve ATM services for its customers around the country, guaranteeing ATM availability with only three hours of down time, thanks to the full-scale deployment of a new system called mobile-device management solution.
Krung Thai General Business Service, a bank subsidiary and a cash-transit service provider, rolled out the solution in April to monitor Krung Thai’s 6,000 ATM machines with an electronic system replacing a manual one.
Krung Thai General Business Service’s managing director Damrong Kaewprasit said his company invested about Bt1 million to developing the mobile-device management solution, which has transformed the bank’s ATM checking and repair system from “manual record and key in” to “electronic record and real-time report”.
The mobile-device solution is designed to allow maintenance staff who carry out ATM-service monitoring and checking to download details of routine jobs assigned by the company’s system, including ATM machines, repair situation, and the route they will take, in both text and map format.
Then, out in the field, they check and correct the status of ATM machines and repair broken ones, moving through the job routes with more productivity. They can electronically record all data and take photos of the ATM machines and send them back to the office’s database instantly. This creates greater efficiency.
“We developed the mobile application to add on to our existing core system. We chose Android-based smart phones because they were open-platform. This is the future. Our maintenance staff use the smart phones as mobile computers, recording all information in text and photo and sending it back to the central system,” Damrong said.
He said that all 700 units of HTC Wildfire smart phones used in the project were registered with the office’s system and would be locked if they were lost. Anyone picking the phones up would be unable to access the information inside.
The beauty of the mobile-device management solution is that it helps Krung Thai Bank to provider better ATM services to its own cardholders as well as those from other banks. Revenue is also increased, since Krung Thai’s ATM machines are more available and more accessible. They are allowed to be down for no more than three hours.
“We began this solution in October last year in some ATM machines, and rolled it out to all of our 6,000 ATM machines around the country in April. We have found that revenue is increased because we have less down time. Executives can get a report on ATM status in only a few minutes, rather than the 20 days it took in the past,” Damrong said.
Local software developer IT Beam designed and developed the solution for Krung Thai General Business Services.
The company is now planning to extend the solution to the bank’s cash-transit service. It will be trialled before the end of the year and is expected to be rolled out in the first quarter of 2012.
HTC Thailand’s country manager Nattawat Woranopakul said this was the first business application for an HTC Android phone in Thailand. HTC’s role in Krung Thai Bank’s new set-up is to provide support for the devices. This solution, with HTC’s products, is able to improve productivity and speed up services while reducing costs.
He said the Thai market for smart phones would grow to about 3.8 million units this year. Of these, about 40 per cent will use an Android platform. Globally, Android phones represent 38 per cent of the smart-phone market and HTC is the world’s second-largest Android manufacturer.
In the past two years, about 290,000 Android applications have reached the market, with more than six billion downloads. More than 2,000 new applications are uploaded to the Android market store every month, Nattawat said.
