How ATEC America Aided a National Retailer in Rewriting the Script for Independent Grocers

In 2017, a major grocery store made a groundbreaking alteration in their day-to-day operations. One of their stores, located in North Carolina, began allowing their customer service cashiers to use cash recyclers, enabling them to automate cash handling for check cashing, bill payment, money orders and till cash.?

Customers enjoy frequenting this particular grocery store to meet their grocery needs and because of the outstanding customer service. Many customers utilize the grocery store to meet their banking needs as well. The new cash recycler enabled the store to serve a population of “unbanked” members of the community – those who did not have a relationship with a particular financial institution but still required banking services. As banks increased cash deposit fees for the money that they take in at their stores, the executive team witnessed check cashing, bill payment, Western Union and money order services as an opportunity to both eliminate the need to deposit cash at their bank and add revenue from financial transaction fees. The store executives were able to eliminate the store’s frequent bank cash deposit fees, increase foot traffic, and significantly add to their bottom line by simply allowing the cashiers to use cash recyclers.

?Although they were funding up to a thousand transactions daily, the large amounts of cash resulted in balancing, security and shrinkage and safety issues. Since their process was subject to human error and was cumbersome, requiring cash counting multiple times a day, management searched for a solution to optimize their ability to provide stellar service to customers and improve overall cash operations.

?This is when the company’s executives met ATEC America, whom they worked with to find a cash solution that met their unique needs, specifically streamlining the process of handling money at their store. ATEC America was able to provide a single cash recycler to serve as a central automated safe, automatically dispensing or receiving cash during check cashing, bill payment, Western Union, and money order transactions.

?ATEC America’s cash solution enabled this store to eliminate counterfeit currency while streamlining balancing the safe and store. One member of the executive team said that “the real win came from improvements in the safe and deposit processes,” as these were expedited by the cash recycler – proving the value of the ATEC America product. In combination with the enhanced security with protection against both shortages and theft, ATEC was able to provide their store with a complete solution to meet their needs. By implementing an ATEC America solution, the grocery store was able to reduce shortages by about 50%, and with the new program, 80% of remaining errors can be tracked through the software and remedied by staff more readily now in less time.

?The new ATEC America cash recycler reduced labor requirements which resulted in a two-year ROI. One of the executives also noted that “the time required to train service desk personnel was cut in half to less than four weeks.” Due to the new cash recycler, employees had more time to spend on face-to-face customer interactions, further encouraging customers to repeat business. Historically, customers enjoyed coming to the location for the outstanding customer service, and ATEC America was able to further support their efforts in maintaining and improving the customer experience. Before implementing ATEC America solutions, this store spent 35 minutes each time they did a safe count, and with the new product, they have drastically reduced this time to only five minutes. A store this large typically closes out the safe three times each day, and gaining an extra hour and a half back in the day is quite the accomplishment. The ATEC America products saved this store time at the beginning of the day as well. The process of doing a safe count, making a deposit and doing yet another safe count used to take them around 45 minutes in the morning, and now they no longer need to manually do these counts, saving even more time.

?The enhanced security, ROI, labor reduction and complete solution brought to the grocery store by ATEC America provided great insight for other independent retailers and grocers. This retailer was so successful in growing their business after the introduction of the ATEC machine, that they purchased a second ATEC America cash recycler. ATEC America has since created additional products based on this success story, including the newest LC71AR and the recently added LTA-100.

?The new LTA-100 and LC71AR encompass everything that the original cash recycler that became a national grocery store’s cash solution had, along with additional features, including the latest cash recycling technology. ATEC’s new cash recyclers offer compact solutions to manage cash in retail, gaming, and banking settings, as they recycle banknotes and coins. Employees are empowered to make changes during shifts or to deposit and dispense cash and coins securely. Safety and efficiency remain top priorities for ATEC America as the company continues to innovate new cash recycling products. By automating essential tasks, staff members are encouraged to focus on more valuable activities, actively contributing to customer satisfaction and company growth. By helping businesses to reduce their workload, labor costs, overall wait times all while increasing security and streamlining essential processes, ATEC America has proven itself as a leading cash automation solution specialist.

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