NoteChain® Innovation Continues with Enhanced Insights

Comment: This article appears in the May edition of Currency News™ which is available at The Banknote Conference, May 21st-24th in Dallas, Texas attended by Phillip Ball and John Winchcombe who are representing NoteChain® and 7 Layer.

7 Layer Solutions – the specialists in software application development for cash logistics – has released a second set of changes this year to its NoteChain® product, adding new analytical reports and product enhancements. These, it says, have been driven by feedback from central banks and a relentless focus on making NoteChain® easy to use.

According to 7 Layer, NoteChain® is the world’s only data analytic platform designed specifically for end-to-end currency management. As a big data and data analytic software offering, it provides deep insight into banknote performance by tracking billions of banknotes throughout a currency system using their unique serial numbers, giving central banks the means to understand the true reality of what is happening to their banknotes in the cash cycle and why.

Through the comparison of multiple data sets over time, NoteChain® will identify and make evident trends, relationships and previously unseen performance correlations, enabling central banks to optimise the usable life of their currency and achieve significant savings per year on note issue, distribution and storage costs.

‘Our first release earlier this year announced the addition of a forecast and modelling functionality to NoteChain® that allows a central bank to ask ‘what if?’ questions. This second release focuses on making the reports created by the software easier to understand and use. We want the PhD maths, which generates genuinely useful and relevant answers to the key currency management questions, to be simple to work with,’ says 7 Layer’s Managing Director, Lee Maisner.

To create this easy to use vision, the user interface (UI) for NoteChain® has been significantly revamped. For example, there is now the option to view the reports either by process, printing, issue, destruction etc., or by the problem they are addressing, supply and demand management, optimising the banknote’s specification etc.

A key addition to the UI is the introduction of ‘steady-state modelling’. This allows the user to enter assumptions, rather than use machine data, to generate views of what may happen.

Functionally, two key additions have been made to help central bank issuing departments gain significant additional understanding of the performance of their banknotes in circulation – the implementation of Assumptive Issuance and the addition of a Daily Destruction visualisation.

Basically if we do not have the actual information as to when a note was ‘created’ (i.e. its birthday), we cannot tell how old it is. Assumptive Issuance allows the user to fill in the gaps in issue data so that a full picture is possible and answers are generated with a complete overview. NoteChain® has always had this capability for destruction data and this addition completes the options.

‘For those central banks without vault management software – which is around one-third of all banks – assumptive issuance is an excellent insight because it tells the bank the most likely date of issue and therefore pinpoints banknote lifetimes and condition by picking up serial number data at re-issue and destruction points,’ says Lee.

The Daily Destruction visualisation was requested by a central bank. They wanted a more detailed view of destruction to give them day to day operational benefits. The report is a specific visual on the very last stage of the banknote lifecycle.

‘We’re calling this upgrade NoteChain® 2.0, and it provides the most complete banknote performance picture for central banks yet. We are encouraging central banks who want a true big data experience without cost or obligation to try the NoteChain® Desk Pilot. It’s a totally secure, no-risk exercise that provides what we call a ‘deep snapshot’ into the performance of their banknotes,’ says Lee.

NoteChain® is the world’s only data analytic platform built specifically for end-to-end currency management and is the industry’s foremost big data and data analytic software offering.  It provides deep insight into banknote performance by tracking billions of banknotes throughout a currency system using their unique serial number.

Representatives from 7 Layer Solutions will be at the Banknote conference in Dallas to demonstrate the software and answer any queries.

Check out the brand new NoteChain® website here

NoteChain® Pilot Program brochure

NoteChain® White paper

  1. What can be gained with Serial Number Reading