Obsessive Cash Disorder is a newly discovered affliction that seems to only infect the passionate and customer oriented cash management professional. While it is true that many traditional cash processors are opting for the balance sheet benefits of outsourcing, there is a demand for services that are beyond outsourced cookie-cutter solutions. When customers request specific services, the cash management professional with obsessive cash disorder will often help win – and then keep the business.
In my travels, I have had the honour of visiting many and varied cash processing centres. Cash processing operations, whether in-house small, medium and large scale vaults, CIT cash “barns”, 3rd Party Outsourcers and gaming/entertainment operations all have one thing in common – they operate to serve their customers. In most cases many, many customers – and those customers can be demanding.
Cash centre customers come in all shapes and sizes. Retail, Bank Branch and ATM are the three most obvious. The category also includes devices as well as traditional entries. Devices can be slot machine cassettes, redemption kiosks, bill exchangers, cash dispersers, cash recyclers, vending machines, etc.. All of these customers have varying demands and for the cash processor who has obsessive cash disorder, the ones with the most unique demands will make for life-long customers. For a Bank, this should equate to an automatic passion for retail customers. The human touch goes a long, long way when you are assisting any sized business manager their cash efficiently and for the least cost. On the other hand, devices don’t care about the human touch – or do they? Devices are notoriously varied in their demand for replenishment and/or removal. In the case of ATM’s and slot machines, the demand placed on them has many variables – local conditions / events, season’s, time of day, mechanical and communications issues to name a few. We can choose to service these customers in a manner and on a schedule that best suits other components of the supply chain and not the device. We can often diminish the importance of the device’s customer, which results in a cash-out or cassette full status and inconveniences the end customer by forcing them to seek another device.
The use of cash will well outlast our great grandchildren albeit in diminishing circulation as we transition to the currency of bits and bytes. For the foreseeable future those of us with a passion for our obsessive cash disorder will dominate the industry and further enhance the status of cash as a convenient, flexible and inexpensive payment alternative. Increasingly countries are placing more value on their currency with many upgrading not just appearance, but security as well. It falls to those of us who are the brains, brawn and passion of the supply chain to keep the money moving in a manner that exemplifies the value and social identity of the product.
Let us all raise a cheer for those within our operations who suffer from obsessive cash disorder. They help guarantee our success by bringing customers and obsessively good cash services together… and by keeping those all important relationships bearing value for both parties.
