Industry first helps companies prevent service disruptions before they happen, ensuring higher availability of critical self-service technologies
DULUTH, Georgia –NCR Corporation (NYSE: NCR) today announced NCR Predictive Services, a managed service for self-service terminals. Unlike other offerings that proactively monitor for business disruptions and then react, NCR Predictive Services is the first managed service that will predict failures on these terminals before they happen and dispatch technicians before consumers are impacted. The new service is initially available for NCR SelfServ™ Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) and NCR SelfServ™ Checkout self-checkout terminals.
NCR Predictive Services works by gathering and analyzing a wide variety of data from NCR self-service devices.* This information is then combined with the insights of the NCR Services data warehouse, which maintains operational data from more than 2 million consumer points of service and 12 million annual service actions around the world.
For example, NCR will track component activity, such as receipts printed in a self-checkout terminal or ATM. When the printer nears the end of its lifecycle, or exhibits early signs of failure, the printer can be proactively replaced before the failure occurs. This capability can significantly increase application availability and up-time. When an anomaly is detected, the predictive system will suggest a resolution, which could include dispatching a service technician or starting a remote diagnostic session with an NCR technical expert.
“This shift from a reactive service model to a predictive one will create new value for our customers by ensuring that their mission-critical self-service devices have the highest levels of availability,” said Chris Askew, senior vice president of services, NCR Corporation. “The promise of consumer self-service is to enable a successful interaction, every time. The break-through service innovation we have introduced today will help our customers deliver this promise, enabling successful interactions and positive experiences for consumers.”
NCR Predictive Services also provides the opportunity for secured, audit-controlled remote access for fast resolution or diagnosis of issues. An NCR customer engineer can recover and review logs, and perform problem resolution activities within minutes of an issue being identified, further reducing the number of extended outages. A wide variety of configuration options are available, depending upon the security levels required.
A major U.S.-based supermarket chain is one of the first adopters of NCR Predictive Services. The service is already deployed in thousands of self-checkout lanes, helping the grocer maximize the up-time of self-service technologies and enhance the shopping experience for customers.
Industry analyst firm Gartner examines the shift from a reactive services model to a predictive one in its February 2010 report, “Market Insight: Introducing the Gartner Product Support Maturity Scale.” In the report Gartner states, “Only now are we seeing mainstream vendors beginning to move beyond mere reactive capabilities to develop service offerings that have the potential to deliver tangible business value over and above that of a technical insurance policy.” Gartner further reinforces the value of predictive services in a November 2010 report, “How Proactive is Your Support Provider” stating that, “Gartner end-user customer inquiry trends indicate that many organizations are becoming weary of traditional support services that concentrate on remediation after-the-fact when they would much rather have providers that at least attempt to prevent foreseeable issues becoming problematic.”
NCR Predictive Services is the next evolution of NCR’s Interactive Insight™ which is a state of-the-art continuous improvement process to provide consistent, enterprise-wide analytics across products, customers and countries around the world. Leveraging one of the world’s largest databases of services information, NCR can drive quality improvements into new and existing products as well as analyze a customer’s technology environment to proactively optimize their estate.
*NCR Predictive Services does not gather, store or analyze data regarding the individual users of self-service devices.
About NCR Corporation
NCR Corporation (NYSE: NCR) is a global technology company leading how the world connects, interacts and transacts with business. NCR’s assisted- and self-service solutions and comprehensive support services address the needs of retail, financial, travel, healthcare, hospitality, entertainment, gaming and public sector organizations in more than 100 countries. NCR (www.ncr.com) is headquartered in Duluth, Georgia.
NCR is a trademark of NCR Corporation in the United States and other countries.
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Cameron Smith
NCR Corporation
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