During this time of uncertainty, businesses of all kinds are embracing new challenges due to the COVID-19 pandemic. When there’s fear of the supply chain disrupting, consumers tend to stock up on everything from food, at-home fitness equipment, toilet paper and even cash.
How are these other businesses handling the extreme change in demand? They are constantly evaluating and reworking their inventory management strategies and processes to ensure they keep inventory in-check and customers happy. For example, companies like Target and Wal-Mart are making sure they are ordering more of high demand products such as bottled water, and less of lower demand products such as team sports equipment.
Inventory management isn’t just about food and sports equipment though, it’s also about cash. Logicpath has worked with thousands of branches and ATMs to help banks and credit unions create new inventory management practices that are helping them through the uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic. Here are some common challenges they are facing when it comes to managing their branch and ATM cash during this time so it can help your financial institution adapt to the ongoing changes:
- Cash-In-Transit and Supply Chain Disruption
- Depending on the armored car carrier, lead time and cash delivery frequencies are changing. It is important to be in touch with your armored car carrier and money supplier to ensure you are timing your deliveries correctly.
- Ordering Cash Centrally
- If a bank or credit union used to order cash through a decentralized ordering process, they are now having to switch to a centralized ordering process. This means one person is managing the cash orders for all branches and ATMs, which is recommended during this time of uncertainty when there may be branch and lobby closings, and staff that’s out sick.
- Filling their ATMs/ITMS
- Many institutions are unable to measure fill their onsite ATMs due to branch lobby closings. This has lead the armored car carriers to have to step in and fulfillments to their routes.
- Demand versus Usage
- More customers are stockpiling cash because they have a fear of running out. It has been reported by media outlets such as Forbes, that customers are withdrawing larger than normal amounts of cash by about 20%.
We recommend that banks and credit unions put a system in place to manage their cash orders remotely. If you don’t have a branch and ATM cash management software in place, now is the time to implement one. With the current COVID-19 pandemic constantly changing the day-to-day life of consumers and businesses, it is more important than ever for financial institutions to be flexible and adaptive by having the right processes and software in place to help.
If you’re interested in learning more about Logicpath’s C3 Financial application, a branch and ATM cash inventory management solution, and how we can help your bank or credit union address the above challenges during COVID-19 please click below.
