During the reporting year, the main focus of our R&D activities again lay on the following three areas:
- software as the key to optimizing the overall branch process chains of retail banks and retailers
- the development of convergent base technologies for our core business activities in retail banking, the retail industry and in related areas of business
- improvements to the serviceability (Glossary) of our hardware and software with a view to reducing the cost to customers of operating our solutions
We considerably extended our Software portfolio for banks and retailers. Two particularly important developments in this area were the addition of new software functions to our PC/E Suite, making it possible, for example, to complete banking transactions by cell phone, and a new application that allows users to make person-to-person payments, i.e., cash transfers to others. These features mean that a bank’s customers can now initiate cash payments to a beneficiary using a range of sales channels. The transaction is authorized by means of two number codes at the ATM, one of which is sent to the cell phone. With a view to reproducing the banks’ Internet portals and services on the cell phone, we integrated technical components provided by a partner firm into our own software portfolio. Banks can use it to set up a mobile sales channel without an additional redundant infrastructure, while providing familiar Internet banking services and a high level of security to mobile devices. This innovation allows us to add mobile services to the range of sales channels we support for retail banks.
Wincor Nixdorf’s new software supports the efforts of banks to intensify contact with their customers via self-service systems (Glossary) , and to use ATMs as a sales channel. These applications make it possible for them to target advertising messages or additional, attractive offers at self-service terminals, such as ticket sales and a facility for recharging prepaid cell phone cards. In collaboration with international banks, we developed our net-centric software (Glossary) platform by adding new applications that control branch and counter processes. However, developments to our software platform go beyond sales channel applications. Our aim is to further develop the value chain. To this end, we have added a payment solution that takes over the processing of card-based payments.
With regard to software for the retail industry, we extended the functionality of our TP Application Suite (Glossary) software platform to include several new components. There is now a dedicated software module that can personalize the design and control of customer loyalty programs. This module facilitates the implementation of individual bonus programs and customer services at the branch, manages tailored sales campaigns and simplifies the administration of customer cards and accounts. Considerably improved and extended diagnostic and monitoring tools also facilitate the central management and control of a retail organization’s entire branch landscape. As part of the branch solution element of our retail portfolio, we developed an ERP (Glossary) component that performs the key inventory-related tasks at branch level. Following the certification of our interface to SAP NetWeaver, we now meet an important requirement of many leading retailers.
