EFMARK and CIMCO Ensure Smooth-Running ATMs
Problem:
EFMARK Premium Armored, the nation's largest independent company focused exclusively on servicing automated teller machines (ATMs), has offered a wide range of packages tailored to individual customer needs since its founding in 1981. Customers taking advantage of both cash replenishment and ATM maintenance services from EFMARK have realized great program efficiencies.
The company's strategy to be the best in these important areas of customer relationship management for financial institutions has paid handsome dividends. Westmont, Ill.-based EFMARK now services nearly 50,000 ATMs in 43 states, serving 1,600 financial institutions.
With its deep knowledge of total ATM program management, EFMARK helps financial institutions reduce operating costs while delivering a higher level of service to customers. Its expertise and sole focus on ATMs plays a key role in providing uninterrupted service to its customers.
While working diligently to be the best ATM services company in the marketplace, EFMARK could not say the same for its incumbent telecommunications providers. Each month, EFMARK received several hundred invoices for telecom services from its local provider, long distance and data provider. In effect, each ATM access point was receiving its own phone bill. The sheer amount of time needed to process the bills each month placed an unnecessary burden on key financial personnel.
Another challenge was the urgent maintenance of non-functioning ATMs. When performing problem resolution, EFMARK professionals were often forced to call multiple contacts for different telecom services. Without clear and effective resolutions to their ATM problems, the telecom contacts could potentially damage EFMARK's credibility with customers.
Not wanting to tie up its IT resources with mundane tasks, EFMARK looked to make a strategic shift in the partners that provided its telecom and IT infrastructures.
Solution:
EFMARK spent considerable time analyzing a number of telecommunications providers. After a thorough evaluation period in 2001, EFMARK selected CIMCO Communications, an integrated communications provider in Oakbrook Terrace, Ill., for long distance and data communication services. After a three-month migration period, almost 300 EFMARK ATM locations were linked via data transmissions from CIMCO. A short time later, CIMCO started providing local phone services in EFMARK's five-state Midwest region. And in 2004, CIMCO started providing Internet services and network router management to the company's offices nationwide.
EFMARK now receives a single invoice from CIMCO instead of having to review boxes of invoices. In addition, EFMARK reviews and approves its invoice through CIMCO's Web-based portal. The bill delineates ATM locations, services and routers in the ways that IT executives want to review the bill. There is no guessing game as to what services EFMARK is receiving and for which it is paying.
Other benefits of the electronic bill include being able to sort information on the bill, associate various lines within sub-accounts with their appropriate costs or profit centers, break down bills by geographic location, and substitute lengthy circuit numbers with descriptions.
"We selected CIMCO for its stellar reputation for putting the customer first," said Kevin Walsh, Vice President/Controller at EFMARK. "Just as importantly, CIMCO has honored its agreement. It provided a single point of contact for our IT department and treated trouble tickets in the urgent way one would expect from a key infrastructure provider. Our lifeblood lies in the uptime of our ATM network. CIMCO lets us focus on how to better grow our business while alleviating our concerns about whether our network is running at optimal levels."
In addition, CIMCO has eliminated the need for EFMARK IT professionals to sit on the phone all day with a telecom technology trouble ticket. CIMCO addresses network problems quickly.
Results:
As a result of their partnership, EFMARK has increased efficiencies and driven down costs. For example, CIMCO has helped EFMARK reduce PICC access handoff fees by $3,000 to $4,000 per month. Today, if EFMARK needs to add or delete a network access point, then it does so through a single CIMCO account representative. In addition, EFMARK has reduced non-strategic workloads by eliminating the need for IT and financial professionals to waste time processing checks for individual invoices. The savings have amounted to approximately $15 per check, thereby allowing staff members to focus on more strategic projects.
CIMCO also does not require EFMARK to sign any volume commitments. Since EFMARK's business fluctuates month-to-month, the company benefits from CIMCO's policy of no minimum thresholds.
"CIMCO responds to our needs as if they were an extension of our IT department and our IT infrastructure," Walsh said. "The partnership is important to both our business-to-business, and business-to-consumer services."