The cash revolution

Cash handling is extremely expensive. It costs European companies more than 50 billion euro a year. In Germany's retail sector alone, cash processes generate annual costs of about 7.4 billion euro; in banking, they average around 3.9 billion euro. Most of the costs occur in the front-end. And in the front-end, the single highest cost-driver is personnel, accounting for 72 percent in retail stores and 61 percent in banks.
As a global provider of solutions that combine hardware, software and services, Wincor Nixdorf has a strong position in both the banking and retail industries. Using its ex- pertise in both, Wincor Nixdorf has developed an innovative concept that improves cash handling across the company and even be- tween the banking and retail industries.
With Wincor Nixdorf's Cash Cycle Management Solutions, banks and retailers can optimise their cash-handling pro cesses in a highly efficient way. The solutions represent nothing short of a revolution in the way they can handle banknotes and coins in the future.
The new CINEO product family A core element of Wincor Nixdorf's new cash management solution is the next-generation CINEO (Cash Intelligence - NEO) hardware system. Its components can be used by banks and retail companies alike. The new product family consists of ATMs, cash recycling systems, automatic teller safes (ATS) and other self-service terminals as well as systems that automate checkout processes such as self-service checkouts and payment terminals.
All CINEO systems use the same banknote processing technology, whether the device is for a retail or banking environment. The systems are equipped with new storage media based on a uniform standard. The concept is holistic: The storage media are used across the system family and throughout the cash cycle for both deposits and withdrawals. An intelligent memory chip in the banknote storage unit stores information about the level of cash inside and where and when the unit has been used and opened.
Front-end optimisation There is no question that cash handling in branch operations can be further optimised in the front-end. The CINEO system platform is designed to completely automate cash replen- ishment and removal processes in checkout zones, including cash recycling.
Moreover, the platform enables a swift and efficient consolidation of cash receipts, eliminating labour-intensive processes such as counting banknotes according to the double-checking principle. This leads to significant savings in time and money, in addition to maximising security, as the pilot user POCO-Domäne shows.
The new CINEO system platform also optimises cash handling in bank branches. The system's innovative banknote storage concept with the intelligent E2E-cassettes allow cash to be exchanged between individual cash points for the first time and thus within the branch's own cash cycle. Cash deposited into ATS systems at the counter can be used to replenish ATMs in the self-service zone.
Credit Suisse, for instance, has already tested a cash recycling system from Wincor Nixdorf's new CINEO product family. "The experiences we made with the system during the pilot phase have been very positive," says Jürgen Maier, Product Management Debit & Cash Services at the bank. "Credit Suisse is convinced that the so- lution will allow branch processes to be designed more effectively and ATM operating costs to be reduced significantly."
Cross-sector optimisation Retailers and retail banks are closely linked by cash. Approximately 90 percent of retail companies deposit their daily cash receipts at their local bank and also pick up change. This fact has led to another revolutionary approach of Wincor Nixdorf - to optimise cash flows between the banking and retail industries. The company's new Inter-Business Cycle approach enables easy and secure cash handling between retailers and banks and thus helps lower costs for each group. Cash no longer needs to be removed to cash centers and then transported to the central bank.
Instead, banks can replenish their cash points directly with full E2E banknote storage cassettes from retail stores (see diagram). In a next step, cash-in-transit (CiT) companies and cash centers can be integrated. Wincor Nixdorf's vision for Cash Cycle Management is to rationalise cash handling, link cash processes across businesses and industries in an intelligent way and become the leading provider of end-to-end solutions in this area.
Innovative software and services The Cash Cycle Management Solutions Base from Wincor Nixdorf is an innovative soft- ware spectrum with modules for controlling and optimising the cash processes in bank branches and stores, but also for managing the complete cash supply chain - from the branch or store to the central bank.
The soft- ware, which is continually expanded and refined, is based on a modern software architecture and includes solutions for system monitoring, cash inventory forecasting and optimisation, order management, track & trace and management reporting. The Cash Cycle Management Solutions Base allows banks and retail companies to assume the management of their cash processes them- selves. They can take advantage of Wincor Nixdorf's bundled software expertise in the banking and retail areas, and integrate their own processes across these two industries.
All functionalities of the Cash Cycle Management Solutions Base are also part of the Wincor Nixdorf eServices Platform, which serves as the basis for IT operation and cash cycle management by Wincor Nixdorf. Banks and retailers can thus hand over complete control of their cash processes and IT man- agement to Wincor Nixdorf's service organisation.
They benefit from the know-how of the company's specialists, economies of scale and an international service orga nization that ensures uniform IT services management standards world-wide via the eServices Plat- form. Customers can concentrate on their core business and use the resources they have saved for investments in further innovations. The advantages: complete transparency of cash and IT processes at an optimal cost and with the best possible system availability.
(The writer is CEO, Innovative (Pvt) Ltd).