Nearly 10 years ago, I sat down across the table from Gene Pranger, inventor of interactive teller machines (ITMs) and video banking, interviewing for a job while completing my college education. I loved his passion for the community financial space. At the time, large national financial institutions were growing at such a rapid pace that the community financial institutions were struggling to keep up. His vision was to find a way for these community and regional banks to grow their footprint with a small amount of capital, without sacrificing the face-to-face interaction that makes them great, and truly differentiate themselves from national banks. Additionally, how can we find a way to allow the existing branches to become profitable as branch traffic saw year-over-year declines, on average, without sacrificing the consumer experience? I was ecstatic to join the cause and couldn’t wait to start making a difference.

Fast forward and a large global technology company announced the acquisition of a technology company pioneering video banking software to add ITMs as part of their portfolio. This gave ITMs the visibility and platform now to be globally recognized, among several other great resources to mature the product. Inadvertently, ITMs started to be sold and implemented the wrong way. Some saw the technology as a super ATM or an ATM with video chat instead of a teller platform capable of doing so much more. This made a simple product overly complex, and competition started to arise to match the growth being seen and clouded the strategy that was initially conceived. Incomplete planning and training lead to unsatisfactory deployments and negative reviews of the product. After four years of helping to educate the market and working with financial institutions of all different sizes all across the country, I decided enough was enough. We had to get back to the vision. We had to pause and get the process right to match a great technology the market desperately needed.

When I met Brian Cook and Randy Neu at Cook Solutions Group (CSG), I felt as if I was back in Gene’s office with people that cared more about the experience than just making money. Here we had a recipe to partner with the manufacturers on the technology but put a unique twist around the deployment and strategy, which in turn would provide a holistic approach once again that the market deserved.

Convert from ATM to ITM in 3 Easy Steps

Step 1: Understand the ITM solution and how it fits into your FI market strategy.

ITMs are not ATMs. An ITM strategy is a branch strategy, and, when deployed as such, can have an amazing impact on your institution. I can’t blame anyone for this, but it happens when you go from a sales force of three to 5,000 overnight — the important details get lost. It took years to educate the market on what an ITM is and how it can work. Joining this with other third-party reviews, it has taken time for everyone to grasp what video banking is capable of doing.

Step 2: Reduced costs, investment is no longer the hurdle.
You know this is the direction you want to go, but now how do you afford it? In the early years, this was a major expense hurdle for the community and regional banks. From unit cost to professional fees to call center integration. It was complex. But, over the past five years, entry costs have been reduced by 68%. This translates to an average savings of $150,000 dollars in upfront expenses per bank. In addition, ITM units themselves have come way down in price with volume bundling programs. Finally, you would be surprised at the dramatic decrease in operational expenses by reducing FTE and often the branch footprint. What appeared to be expensive, now becomes a path to an increased bottom line!

Step 3: Complete and execute the implementation.
So many times over the years, I saw community banks left to just “figure it out” after buying the hardware and software for an ITM. Not knowing the entire picture or being left with questions on how to complete the infrastructure needed for a successful deployment, outside the machines themselves, added too many variables and resulted in failed deployments. 16 years into this journey, learning valuable and expensive lessons at the cost of the consumer base and employees is unacceptable. By outlining an implementation plan in detail, you can ensure a complete deployment that accomplishes your goals defined early in your discovery process.

Traditional ITM Branch

If the pandemic taught us anything, it has shown how valuable a solid plan around consumer engagement can be. We have also seen how adaptable your consumers are to technology that we initially didn’t believe they would adopt. Whether you have looked at ITMs in the past or have never entertained the idea, I’d suggest investing an hour of your time to educate yourself and your team on ITMs.

A quick recap:

• Host your strategy workshop.
• Identify your conversion locations and timeline.
• Execute your implantation plan.

It can be this easy!