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3 Reasons to Extend Your ATM Test Lab Into the Cloud

Steve Gilde January 9, 2023
3 Reasons to Extend Your ATM Test Lab Into the Cloud

Brands that invest in making their customer service enjoyable are rewarded by customers in the form of lifetime value, repeat business, and, most importantly, revenue growth. This applies to ATM fleet owners more than ever. 

In fact, according to the Gladly Customers Expectations in 2022 report, 72 percent of consumers are willing to spend more with a brand that provides a great customer experience and 59 percent would recommend a brand to a friend because of good customer service.

On the other hand, 42 percent of people said they would stop buying from a brand altogether after just two bad service experiences.

When it comes to the ATM channel, fleet owners must do everything in their power to deliver a superior customer experience and better compete with other industry players. To do this,  testing is a critical aspect of ensuring the ATMs are working seamlessly for customers. 

In this blog we take a look at three key reasons you should expand beyond the traditional ATM test lab to improve productivity, expand test coverage and reduce costs. 

1 - It’s inefficient

In a typical ATM test lab, the lights will go on at 7:30 or 8:00 AM. During the workday you might find 25 percent of the machines in the lab operational and in use by testers standing there with stacks of test cards running transaction one at a time and writing down results (maybe) on a notepad. 

Unfortunately, 25 percent of the machines will be sitting idle in some state of disrepair or in need of a software upgrade. 25 percent of the machines will be old models that are completely off-line, waiting to be crated up and moved out of the lab. The remaining 25 percent are new machines that are still sitting in their shipping cartons because there is no room in the lab until the old models are removed.

By 6:00 PM the lights are out and the lab sits idle until the next morning.

While the ATM lab is important and this scenario “works” for many organizations, relying only on physical machines and manual test processes is unproductive and time consuming. How much more efficient to automate as much of the testing as possible and enable your resources to manage much of the testing process from their desktop? How useful to have multiple virtual copies of your ATMs sitting prepped and ready for testing any time of the day or night. How nice to test a wide variety of errors and fault conditions with no risk to expensive ATM hardware?

2 - You need to support remote workers 

Today, some 16 percent of companies globally are fully-remote and around 62 percent of employees aged 22 to 65 say they work remotely at least occasionally (Owl Labs). Leveraging modern testing tools and technologies to support a remote workforce provides organizations with the opportunity to find and retain skilled resources workers, as well increase collaboration and productivity. 

Why not extend your payment testing capabilities beyond the test lab so that they can be accessed and used 24x7x365 by your resources who can be located anywhere on the planet?

3 - It’s expensive

Relying on lab ATMs and manual testing processes is slow and inefficient - which means expensive. Additionally there are substantial costs associated with acquiring and maintaining the physical ATM devices, as well as the raised floor space needed to support them.

Implementing a modern, server-based platform for ATM testing provides an opportunity to extend the test lab beyond its traditional boundaries and deliver cost savings in several areas:

  • Flexible deployment options, include public and private cloud alternatives, can help reduce the cost of acquiring and managing infrastructure
  • Virtualization minimizes the need for ATM hardware and raised-floor lab space
  • Automated testing allows the same number of resources to do more with less
  • Remote access capabilities help reduce the cost of finding, acquiring and retaining staff

Why ATM virtualization is the future

Expanding beyond the walls of your test lab enables better ATM testing that can play a key role in helping your organization increase productivity, improve quality, and speed time to market - while at the same time cutting operational costs and improving the overall experience for your consumers. 

As the ATM channel continues to evolve, it is more important than ever to take a strategic approach to testing that achieves not only peak operational efficiency, but ensures your machines are always available to deliver a seamless customer experience on every transaction.

Do you want to learn more about how to increase the effectiveness of your testing efforts by moving past the limitations imposed by the four walls of your test lab? 

Get in touch with our team of ATM testing specialists today to learn more.

Request a Consultation

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