A vendor provides the link between banks that have technology galore, and armored car companies that may have old IT systems or none at all.

Ever wonder how come the local ATM never runs out of twenties? Or why no other ATM does either? Morphis, Inc. software can predict the demand at a particular ATM (more demand over the weekend in an ATM near a sports arena, less for a central business district with little shopping) and get the cash delivered, track the delivery transaction, report to the bank and send out the bill for delivery.

Based in Dallas, TX, Morphis, Inc. calls this the currency supply chain, and it manages this currency supply chain by directing the armored cars that pull up to the bank with bags of bills or pre-loaded ATM cassettes.

“We can predict what one ATM will need and then forecast the needs back up through the currency supply chain,” said Gary Faulkner, executive vice president and chief marketing officer at the company. “That ATM might be one of 100 owned by a bank spread over three states with four armored carriers, six upstream vaults and three different Federal Reserve branches. Our software takes the endpoint demands, aggregates them and optimizes delivery.”

Mount Vernon Money Center in Mount Vernon, NY, which provides a full range of services for ATM supply and maintenance, was an early Morphis client.

“Morphis software ties together the whole process of cash replenishment,” said Eamon McGarry, the company’s chief technology officer. A bank places an order for cash and either picks it up or depends on Mount Vernon to supply it. The cash is packed into bags or cassettes in a loading room and a route manager sets up the delivery schedule. The latest version of Morphis incorporates MapPoint for automated route planning, but Mount Vernon isn’t using it yet.

Trucks load up with cash and head out to ATMs, reload the machines, remove residual cash, and bring it back for inventory and reconciliation. A process that once required account reps to enter the same information into three or four spreadsheets to distribute around the company now goes directly into Morphis where the vault manager, route planner and the billing department can all access the same information and create reports for the bank customers. Now once the trucks have returned with residual cash and it has been counted, account reps can hit a button on Morphis and send reports to customers.

“In the account rep’s work, it has reduced data entry by 66 percent,” said McGarry. “We send a lot of reports to customers electronically, some in the form of a flat file they can import into their database, so we save them data entry time as well.” Route management had formerly required two people for four hours a day, and is now handled by one man in an hour.

Mount Vernon discovered Morphis four years ago, when it had a cash management system. The two firms have worked together in building out the software to meet the needs of a currency supply chain. Mount Vernon continues to customize the software, which runs entirely on Microsoft, said Robert Egan, the Mount Vernon CEO.

“The integrity of the transaction is understood. It is a managed process where we can intervene any time the process goes outside standard procedures, and banks love that because you are managing their cash,” Egan said.

Building on the foundation of Morphis, Mount Vernon continues to expand the services it offers, from providing cash for tellers at convenience stores and gas stations to handling the cash pulled in by gaming resorts.

“We can move into a larger market because of our technology,” Egan added. “We are constantly looking to add value to our operations in the Northeast.”

Faulkner said Morphis is constantly modifying the software to meet customer requirements.

“We started with ATM portfolio management and cash and from there it grew into the armored car software, and then to management of field service technicians, because a lot of carriers do the first line maintenance on ATMs as well,” he explained.

Last year NetBank asked for a centralized view of the database, so Morphis created a module called Customer Care Center, which gives call center associates one screen where they can see everything they need to know about a customer or vendor relationship.

The company provides the link between banks, which have technology galore, and armored car companies, which often have old, inflexible systems or no systems at all. The country has about 126 armored car companies, said Faulkner. Six are major firms.

“The smaller ones have no technology at all; they ask us what kind of PC they have to buy. That’s what pushed us into the ASP business,” he said. Other companies have old and very inflexible legacy systems.

Bank of America insists on using a single XML format file for its orders to armored car companies, so Morphis takes the messages and converts them into a format that Dunbar’s legacy system understands. Morphis also integrates billing into its system, generating invoices at midnight on the last day of the month with the push of a button.

New Windows-based hybrid ATMs that can dispense tickets and stamps as well as cash are making life more complex for armored car companies, as well as the banks that own and operate these machines. Morphis not only forecasts the demand for all these items of value, but also accounts for the revenue they generate. “Our customers now know what they sold, how much they should have received, and can confidently ask ‘where is my money.’ Morphis has the answer,” said Faulkner.

www.morphisinc.com
www.mvmc.com