Monday, August 25, 2008

Key Bank - 650 branch (slow) rollout



Sorting through the inbox this weekend, we noticed that Diebold have quietly announced a substantial rollout at KeyBank (long rumored), starting with 8 of the bank's recently refurbished upstate-New York branches. The rollout, which is slated to address ~650 of the bank's 950 branches over the course of three years, is part of a broader upgrade of the bank's customer-facing electronic interfaces--including large-scale electronic displays behind the teller counter (visible displaying Key's logo, above), enhanced ATMs, and self-service deposit machines.

According to the press release, the core objective of the program is to migrate customers to more self-directed service options, freeing up branch staff to provide more in-depth assistance on more complex, consultative issues, and ultimately reducing transaction-driven branch traffic.

Once deployed, much of the content on the screens will be centrally developed and directed, but each branch will also have the flexibility to program its own community content (e.g. uploading images from community events) and provide customized local offers. Content will be delivered over the bank's existing network infrastructure, and managed using software provided by Diebold. Ostensibly, content will also be delivered to the ATM screens, where offers can be customized using the bank's CRM data.

This is one of only a few cases we are aware of where an ATM provider such as Diebold is also providing digital signage infrastructure and software, but it would seem to us to be a logical extension of the existing service agreements such companies provide.

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Bank Leumi - a smart approach


We turn our attention next to the hot digital signage market in Israel. Bank Leumi, one of Israel’s oldest and biggest banks, has implemented a digital signage system in roughly 170 of its branches. The network was installed in June 08 by TVeez and used TVeez' Marketing Intelligence Platform and Minicom’s Audio Visual Display System (AVDS).

A unique feature of the Leumi network is the identification of key customer information and the automatic targeting of content based on a marketing profile.

The signage platform is linked into the bank teller stations and key information regarding customers is passed to the TVeez platform and matched to a profile. Using the banks own defined marketing rules the TVeez platform then pulls promotional and educational content relevant to the customer. The content is then displayed on the teller channel for the customer to view while waiting to finish their transaction. This is a more sophisticated approach of targeting content to screens to increase relevancy to the customers in the branch than the more commonly used approach of programming a loop.

Additionally the platform has the capability of displaying content of different lengths depending on the time of day and volume of customers in the branch.

TVeez has made available some results from the network that we are displaying here- more detailed information regarding the project is available from the TVeez website.

* Targeted messages at the teller station resulted in 120% more enquiries at the
teller
* An increase of 23% in purchases of financial services – loans, credit cards, CDs, securities, and more
* 42% increase in sales revenues
* 57% increase in customer satisfaction

We think this is an exciting approach to a digital signage solution. In the same way that the internet industry developed smarter ways of marketing through making content more relevant to the viewer, digital signage must follow suit. We must also congratulate Bank Leumi on having the vision required to implement a more advanced solution.

Watch this space for more from TVeez.

Banc Sabadell - Audience measurement pilot



Wututu, the audience measurement company based in Spain, has been selected by the Banc Sabadell to implement its audience measurement system Person Counter in the newly installed digital signage network in Banc Sabadell locations. Banc Sabadell, currently with more than 1,100 branches in Spain, will initially carry out a pilot in more than 30 branches, and will study the viability of deploying the system across the network.

During the first phase of the pilot, Banc Sabadell will incorporate two screens per location, one inside and another one behind the glass display nearby the entrance which will broadcast varied information and advertisements about the bank and its products. Person Counter will capture and report on how many people look at the screen and for how long each person watches the messages being displayed. The system can also identify which message was view and tie this back to product sales. This data will be used to measure the effectiveness of the system and content being displaed.

Person Counter uses a camera and high speed wireless or 3G to send the data back to the central application.

It will be interesting to see how this pilot develops. There are many companies in the space of audience measurement but so far high investment costs in the equipment and software has prevented any network wide implementations. Some of the newer products on the market now use standard web cameras to lower the cost, as well as shifting the pricing model to a one time payment for the software.

This coupled with the argument that the measurement system is only needed in a small % of the network to generate solid results could mean we see more projects of this type in the near future