Case Study: Standard Bank achieves up to 23% reduction in ATM downtime with IdeaScale

Standard Bank Reducing Downtime by up to 23%

Standard Bank, one of South Africa’s largest financial services groups operating across 20 African countries and beyond, runs an internal innovation program called Up Squad to surface employee ideas. A pressing operational challenge identified was optimizing ATM cash-in-transit (CIT) route planning — balancing service levels, risk and cost in the ATM supply chain — while off‑the‑shelf tools were expensive and typically optimized only for cost.

A team member built "Navigator," a bespoke AI-driven route optimization tool with customized algorithms to solve the multi-objective constrained problem and let users trade off service and cost. The prototype significantly reduced failure demand (ATM downtime) by 20–23% in 2016, and the initiative attracted strong engagement across the bank, earning recognition as runner-up for Wildest Innovation.

Standard Bank