NCR Stresses on Service Delivery makes India as Service Point

Dayton Business Journal:
In a move to strengthen its lagging customer services division, Dayton-based NCR Corp. opened a $6 million facility in Mumbai, India, early this month that will serve as one of three major customer service hubs around the world.

The 48,000-square-foot center, operated by the customers services division and expected to have at least 250 employees, handles service calls primarily for the growing area of automated teller machines (ATMs) in India, along with retail scanners, data-warehousing products and technology systems, spokesman Jeff Dafler said. This is the third major call center for NCR and will increase the number of ATMs NCR is able to manage in India from about 6,000 to 25,000, he said. The center is targeting customers in India and Asia primarily while other sites are handling other areas of the world.

He said NCR is working hard to cut costs in its customer services division and boost its sales by focusing on markets where it dominates. While the three prominent divisions of ATMs, retail and data-warehousing are expected to expand sales this year, NCR said customer services should see sales edge down 2 percent to 3 percent. But operating larger hubs saves NCR money and gives customers a one-stop shop for customer services, Dafler said.

And India is a strong market for NCR. Late last year the company launched what it said was the first ATM designed specifically for the Indian market. Since then, it won a contact for the ATMs from Cosmos Bank in India and also picked up a technology award.

Dafler said banking customers are increasingly opting to outsource the ATM network management to NCR and the new center will service that growing client base, he said.

"We are, by and large, the market leader in ATMs in India," he said, adding the market is slated to grow 40 percent annually. "That's an important position to defend and we want to capitalize on that."

The new building in India comes after NCR recently announced a $6 million expansion at its headquarters in Dayton as part of an effort to consolidate nearby sites.

Matt Summerville, an analyst with industrial technology analyst for KeyBanc Capital Markets in Cleveland, said NCR has increased its capital expenditures to about $250 to $270 million this year from $229 million in 2003 and $194 million in 2002.

"They've been talking about (increasing) spending for some time, about lowering their cost structure," Summerville said.

The site in India will work in conjunction with two other customer services hubs, one in Columbia, S.C., and another in Lanarkshire, Scotland, which opened in May. The site in India is targeting customers in its home country and other areas of Asia; the center in Columbia, S.C., takes care of customers in the Americas; and the Scottish site takes care of customers in Europe.

However, Dafler said NCR works with each customer to find the site that is most appropriate, even if the customer isn't in the same part of the world the service site is located. He also said NCR operates about 10 smaller customer services sites around the world that can be used by customers.

He wouldn't speculate on whether there could be more hubs for the company on the horizon.