You need to innovate to survive

This is very much the case in Germany where we know that 25,000 bank branches are making a loss and need to close. The hard part is deciding how to continue servicing your customers when your bank office is closed (or downscaled)? This is where you need to be innovative – and this is where Tellma GmbH is innovative. They saw the gap and wanted to provide a full software & hardware Video Kiosk Terminal Solution to banks that need to innovate to survive.

Their customers – financial service providers – have a need to perform all banking use cases via a Video Kiosk Terminal Solution.

So where did we start?

Well to begin we sat down with Tellma and discussed their idea. We identified that they need not just a development agency but a partner who is invested in the software also delivering, because if it delivers Tellma wins more deals and we can grow our software presence. With this in mind we started on developing a basic or ‘MVP’ (Minimal viable product) version of the solution.

Time to innovate

Having worked in the financial service industry before with banks like Raiffeisen we understood that when innovating there always is a bottom-line. And the bottom-line always is what are my financial gains? This formed the starting block of the solution we would build together with Tellma. The end-customer being financial service providers – need to know what is their financial gain from a Video Kiosk Terminal Solution? To that end we started identifying the highest gain use cases which could benefit from video kiosk banking. These included:

• Account Management
• Mortgage & Loans
• Activating new cards
• Depositing
• Investment Advice
• Wealth management

This also meant we identified our first challenges of the project..

When identifying that we needed components like a identification we started seeing that the solution would comprise of different third-party solutions like VideoID. It meant our first challenge was to design an infrastructure that was both quickly deployable to different environments whilst being able to integrate via API with multiple third-party solutions. Our awesome video development team huddled together and thought it through, with success!

The eventual solution allows for rapid deployment of the Video Kiosk Terminal Solution to multiple environments using Docker technology.

Challenges lead to new Features

After the Video Kiosk Terminal Solution was defined, we continued on and identified that bank agents should be able to monitor and control the physical environment the kiosk is located in. A clear example was when discussing your bank business using a kiosk you would like to have the location close the door so others cannot hear what you are discussing. As in many industries, but most prevalent in the financial services industry – if the solution is not customer friendly, users won’t want to use it. With this in mind we therefore developed an agent workstation so that bank employees could control everything from air-conditioning or heating to opening or closing the kiosk door. It made for a much more pleasant customer experience which was reflected in the results (see below).

Know Your Customer

For unique features like video identification we needed to integrate the solution via REST API with third-party solutions. Features like these are crucial in the Know Your Customer (KYC) practices every financial service provider goes through. We therefore scanned the market for effective solutions which had a strong API available and tested them extensively. We eventually came to a provider whom we use today and is used by various German and Swiss banks to identify and validate their customer is who they say they are.

So what are my financial gains?

We kept coming back to this question throughout development of the software solution. We know we had the use cases hammered down, the KYC aspect covered but we also know that in the financial service provider sector there is always that question: what are my financial gains? With our state-of-the-art agent workstation centralising bank employee resources, banks could drive down costs in low-turnover bank offices. Reducing their physical space meant reducing costs, whilst maximising their human resources.

But we are still not done..

Software solutions in the financial services sector are prone to extreme scrutiny when it comes to data management, security and compliancy. Using our great in-house testers, as well as an external company tested our solutions with results in-line with ISO27001 standards. We took it a step further and passed for the ISAE3402 penetration testing, often required by banking organisations. Steps like these we had seen were necessary for clients like Raiffeisen and so we were well prepared to do it again for German and Swiss banks.

Final touches make the difference!

The kiosk solution has been running since 2017 and we have made major upgrades with new features and functionalities since then. We work closely with Tellma in deciding which components to add and to upgrade. Features like custom advertisement on kiosk screens when not in use, or full branding of both hardware and software. We keep making improvements to the solution with the original goal in mind: if it delivers Tellma wins more deals and we can grow our software presence.

Solid solutions deserve solid support

As a partner to Tellma it is understandable that the video kiosk software requires custom and unique support. Our custom SLA for Tellma has been in place for years and we are glad we can help them with a solid software solution for the truly top leader they have become in their market.