Our successful performance in the Product business was primarily driven by sales of cash systems (Glossary)  (cash-in, cash-out and recycling systems). Demand was excellent both for high-end systems and for the simpler mono-functional systems we produce in greater volume. The principal motors for growth in our worldwide operations were new system installations and, increasingly, replacement investment in older systems. We secured orders from banks and from independent providers.

Intelligent recycling and deposit systems, an area in which Wincor Nixdorf regards itself as a leading technology provider, continue to act as an innovative force in the high-end area. An example of our success is the large number of big orders we have received from Europe and Asia for the compact ProCash 4000 Recycler. The main advantage of the system lies in its cassette technology, which simplifies system handling and the replenishment and emptying process.

During the year under review, the number of Wincor Nixdorf cash/check deposit system installations, which, incidentally, we were the first to produce, reached nearly 10,000 systems worldwide. We are now offering a third-generation cash/check deposit module that can accept up to fifty checks in bundled form, or as individual banknotes as part of an automated process. The systems make the subsequent manual processing of checks and cash redundant, thus generating substantial cost savings.

In the area of automated teller safes there was increased demand for recycling models and for systems with “assisted self-service”. These speed up the process of disbursing cash to the customer by means of a magnetic strip card for specific transactions (“assisted self-service”).

We also achieved considerable success with similar assisted self-service systems (Glossary)  in an interesting niche market – the casino industry. We received orders from North America and Asia for self-service systems that can be used to pay out winnings, thus automating and optimizing a casino’s entire cash handling process.

Business in the field of high-volume mono-functional cash systems was largely driven by an increase in sales of self-service products in the “emerging markets”. We also gained further ground in sales of “off-premise” installations, which allow bank customers to withdraw cash at prime locations.

With regard to non-cash products (Glossary) , there was a further increase in business volume in the field of bank terminals, which involve migrating routine customer transactions at branches to a self-service system, thereby offering customers a greater level of service. Sales of these systems rose by a substantial margin.

We successfully positioned our ProInfo 1000 self-service terminal in non-bank environments, such as hospitals and supermarkets. In France, for example, these terminals were integrated as a ticket sale system into the network of a cinema operator. The response from cinema audiences was overwhelmingly positive. Another successful product was our Employee Self-Service (Glossary)  solution, which has now been introduced by several industrial companies. This solution allows all those staff without an intranet connection to access personnel information via a kiosk terminal.

Sales of receipt and document printers also remained buoyant.

Software/Services.
The business with software and services in the Banking (Glossary)  segment continued the notable upward trend established in recent years with contributions from our entire software portfolio. Thanks to further developments made by us, we were able to promote new growth within this field.

The overall success of Wincor Nixdorf’s software business is based on the ProClassic line of software applications. With the help of this software, Wincor Nixdorf is able to offer banks a range of standardized functions tailored to self-service channels as well as management and operating solutions. These functions can also be run on third-party equipment as part of a multi-vendor solution. This contributes to the cost-efficient operation of self-service networks and ensures the rapid availability of new functions. Depending on each bank’s overall customer strategy, additional functionality can be added to the software to create a more individual approach to business-to-customer communication via self-service systems.

Building on our experience with ProClassic in the self-service environment, we offer a multi-sales-channel software solution entitled ProClassic/Enterprise, which attracted a number of additional customers of international standing during the year under review.

This software provides comprehensive tracking for specific elements of banks’ IT systems (infrastructure, security, optimization and management) and the related processes (customer handling, business and transaction processing). As well as providing the benefits of pure IT management, it facilitates the interaction between different business segments in each of the sales channels operated by an individual bank. It also helps to standardize banks’ IT infrastructures in terms of cost and architecture. As a result, new functions and processes are available to all sales channels or users.

During the year under review, we made further developments and gave a new focus to our software portfolio. This was done in order to systematize it and target it more directly at customer processes. Each element of the resulting modular software is fine-tuned with the rest, and over the medium term, the entire portfolio will be supplemented by additional modules. The new structural concept will be entitled the ProClassic/enterprise (PC/e) Banking Solution Suite, and will be introduced in fiscal 2007/2008.

Some of the modules were successfully launched during the year under review:

• a base module to operate the counter/POS environment,
• the Cash Management (Glossary)  module to analyze and optimize branch cash holdings,
• the Security module set, which combines a range of security solutions, e.g., protection against computer viruses in IT networks, secure data communications and anti-manipulation protection for our systems.

Several of these components were successfully certified, during the year under review, according to assessment criteria for service-oriented architecture (SOA (Glossary) ) by the world’s leading industrial company in this field.

Our Services business with the Banking industry also produced strong growth. During the year under review, we further expanded our service infrastructures and significantly increased our product-related services business. We strengthened our own service organization, especially in the United States and Asia. Wincor Nixdorf’s Outsourcing (Glossary)  business secured another major customer in the year under review. The entire concept was updated and expanded. We were also able to move into the field of transaction processing on behalf of an international bank. This involves controlling the handling of transactions between terminals, inter-bank networks and computer systems (host) via switches. We operate both the communications and network infrastructure and the software for the client. This means we can supervise the whole process and ensure reliability and security.