Improving the consumer self-service experience through predictive, proactive IT management: An NCR White Paper

Planned maintenance through predictive and proactive services is important, but it cannot completely eliminate all unplanned incidents. An effective maintenance strategy needs to ensure that unplanned events are handled in the fastest and most effective way possible. In many cases, an issue can be quickly resolved by a service technician who performs diagnostic and resolution actions remotely. In fact, the Aberdeen Group2, a research consultancy, says that firms enjoying best-in-class performance are more than twice as likely to rely on remote resolution of service issues. While remote resolution benefits are clear, uncertainty around the security implications of remote service actions, both for the self-service terminals and for the wider IT infrastructure, have traditionally limited its deployment in unattended, transaction-oriented solutions.

This concern has recently been overcome through remote access capabilities that specifically address security concerns by:

• Enabling remote service without requiring direct network or device access
• Limiting remote service actions to targeted, pre-defined tasks that directly contribute to faster diagnosis and repair
• Providing robust audit capabilities
• Giving customers the ability to restrict access to remote functions without changes to the device’s configuration

Remote support capabilities include both remote diagnostic and remote resolution actions. Both are important and play a role in more responsive maintenance services. Utilizing remote diagnostics ensures that the initial response to incidents can be made in minutes. By combining the data used for predictive services with on-demand diagnostics such as module and event logs, a remote support technician can quickly perform a full diagnosis on the device and put in place a resolution plan. If the issue can’t be fixed remotely, then diagnostic information, targeted repair advice and parts requirements can be made available to the on-site service technician.

By combining remote service capabilities that recognize and address your security requirements with processes that quickly identify opportunities for faster remote resolution, you can ensure that the right people are working to get you back in business in the shortest possible time.