In some ways, ATMs are like your children. If you walk into your kid’s bedroom and notice that it’s suddenly spotless, you assume that something big is about to happen: a request for more allowance, to attend a concert or maybe to borrow your car. Experience has taught you their behavior, so you prepare yourself for what will follow. That’s predictive maintenance on a human level. Banks also use predictive maintenance to monitor atypical ATM service performance and forecast when a failure might occur.

With the number of ATMs worldwide expected to grow to 4 million by 2021¹, predictive maintenance becomes especially important. Consider this: When an ATM goes down, your customers are frustrated because they depend on uninterrupted service. They may contact their branch, or worse, walk to the nearest competitor’s ATM. It’s not just the customer relationship that suffers — it’s also your bottom line.

One bank recently implemented a predictive maintenance practice throughout its system and the results are impressive. Up to 50% of potential ATM failures are predicted before they occur. What’s more, they’ve experienced a 2% increase in ATM availability; a single ATM location can serve customers for an additional 10,000 minutes per year.

Predictive maintenance prevents downtime

Predictive maintenance helps prevent ATM service outages so more customers have successful transactions. Recent banking technology advancements, from cognitive analytics to IoT and sensor technology, enable relevant data (observations) combined with historical data (outcomes) to predict an event. You can monitor and analyze each ATM system’s functions and observe patterns that help you identify and resolve a problem before operational failure.

Data-driven predictive maintenance

One ATM may process a specific number of transactions under normal conditions, but if it’s subjected to high humidity, you may learn that a malfunction is likely to occur. Knowing this, you can schedule and perform preventative maintenance before you’re faced with a crisis. It’s this granular level of data collection and analysis, regardless of machine type, manufacturer or configuration, that helps you anticipate ATM service outages.

Preventative maintenance profoundly impacts banking IT support and helps banks achieve better customer experience. Explore more proactive support topics such as cash management and security in this ebook.