How to Achieve High-Speed Service: BS/2 Georgia Experience

In the fourth quarter of 2022, the SLA (service-level agreement) in Georgia ranged between 99.63% and 99.75%. This means that 998 out of 1,000 incidents have been resolved before the contractual deadline.

The metric is calculated using a formula:

Such efficiency is achieved thanks to a practice-oriented approach to forming service teams. Specialists with suitable skills are scarce in the labor market. Therefore, the company has drawn up an adaptation plan for new employees that includes a comprehensive immersion in the processes. Within a month, newcomers attend topical trainings at the Local Repair Department, where they learn equipment maintenance and component repair. Then the engineers complete a two-week internship and visit the facilities with more experienced professionals. The familiarization period ends with testing, after which the new employees begin to perform their duties. The entire onboarding process takes from six months to a year.

In the photo: BS/2 Georgia technical support team engineers

Banking organizations are increasingly choosing hardware service maintenance and software support. In this way, banks reduce their costs on training and certifying specialists, as well as the administrative and operational expenses associated with human resources management. According to the report from RBR, “Global ATM Market and Forecasts to 2024”, more than half of all ATMs in the world are outsourced for technical support.

To keep machines running without downtime, it is also critical to constantly monitor their performance, detect incidents in time and instantly respond to them, monitor the progress of troubleshooting work. This requires a specialized software solution. Such software can be developed from scratch, but it is faster and easier to acquire or lease a ready-made and proven complex.

BS/2 implements its own software product Service Desk.iQ to automate the operations of maintaining equipment for bank and retail businesses. The system keeps track of parts that need to be repaired or replaced. It also includes a full report on the issues that each specialist tackled. Furthermore, the platform allows tracking the movement of components and spare parts and, after analyzing their life cycles, planning their write-off and procurement of new ones.

Using the SLA.iQ functionality as an example, this is how the service request management system works:

1. Through the established communication channel (the configured feature for monitoring equipment failures, a software component of the Vynamic™ View platform, as well as by phone or e-mail), information about the issue is automatically provided
2. Service Desk.iQ analyzes data and generates a task, which the operator assigns to a particular specialized department
3. Taking into account the engineers’ qualifications and their work schedules, the unit manager divides up the workload among the team
4. After getting the task notification, the responsible engineer gets to work on the problem right away
5. The technician creates a report and documents the troubleshooting actions in the system while working
6. After getting the task notification, the responsible engineer gets to work on the problem right away
7. The operator verifies that the service is being delivered in accordance with the SLA and sends a report to the client

Customers receive monthly reports detailing the amount of work completed, device and software defects, and how these issues were resolved following the SLA.

Since 2017, BS/2 Georgia (the regional office of BS/2) has been installing and supporting self-service devices, as well as providing software solutions, consulting, and training. Due to the company’s competence, the availability of qualified specialists, and an extensive network of service centers conveniently dispersed around the country, major Georgian banks such as the Bank of Georgia, TBC Bank, Liberty Bank, and BasisBank collaborate with it. Today, such centers operate in 6 cities: Tbilisi (head office), Batumi, Poti, Kutaisi, Gori, and Telavi (regional offices). This means that if a device fails, a BS/2 Georgia engineer can get to it fast and fix the problem.

The BS/2 Georgia team currently maintains 35,000 POS terminals and 1,200 ATMs. Both the hardware and the associated software are covered by the service’s technical assistance:

• rapid response to emergencies
• technical failures’ diagnosis and troubleshooting
• routine maintenance of equipment
• management of software versions and configurations
• finding and eliminating vulnerabilities