Specialist software providers to deliver a customer-centric vision for credit-based retailing company
Specialist software providers to deliver a customer-centric vision for credit-based retailing company
Buy As You View (BAYV), a UK supplier of consumer retail goods sold on a credit basis, has selected Welcom Software and K3 Retail for its new multi-million pound customer-centric customer relationship management (CRM), supply chain and financial management solution.
The providers said this will be the first time a fully integrated system of this nature has been developed in the UK, by UK businesses for a UK customer. Welcom will be building a customer-centric solution based upon Microsoft Dynamics CRM (XRM framework) offering call centre and regional operations users’ real-time access to Welcom’s Financier core lending engine and the Microsoft Dynamics AX for Retail solution provided by K3 Retail.
Systems to link up key processes
Together, the providers said the systems will deliver greater efficiency and customer transparency by linking, in real time, online trading, finance, loans, and customer services with supply chain, repair workshops and route tracking. This will give field salesforce and managers a 360-degree view of customer activity and improve BAYV’s multichannel customer engagement.
Andrew Deeley, commercial director at BAYV, said: “We needed to provide better process controls across the business to support our significant growth strategy and the Welcom-led solution with K3 Retail best suited our strategic business requirements. We will also gain efficiencies from more standardised real-time business processes and better flow of information across our business.
“The new system will provide BAYV with a proven solution on a proven platform that will improve efficiency and give ’one version of the truth’ across the whole business. The improved usability and efficiency of the user interface will help us reduce the number of offline processes, data manipulation and inaccuracies which are vital to the more efficient running of the business,” continued Deeley.
“We chose Welcom because their Financier Loan book management software was clearly streets ahead of what was available in the market place. They are one of the few companies who keep abreast of current legislation and OFT [Office of Fair Trading] guidelines around consumer lending in our sector. This means that we don’t have to worry about updating the system to keep up with structural changes that impact the way we operate.
Strong industry links and undertsanding
“Another key factor in the decision was that Welcom introduced us to K3 Retail, who, unlike the other providers, were able to demonstrate the considerable investment they have put into developing robust multichannel retail modules that enhance the Dynamics AX platform,” said Deeley. “Welcom and K3 Retail immersed themselves with the business users from the onset and their vision for the future of BAYV’s new system inspired what was a very critical, sceptical and detail conscious selection panel.”
BAYV initially looked for a system back in the summer 2009, and selected Welcom as the prime contractor from a number of vendors, including Oracle and IBM. BAYV chose Welcom because of its extensive knowledge and experience of the wider financial and loan market and its clear understanding of BAYV’s business and brand.
But, according to the vendors, it was Welcom’s highly customer-centric vision for a new generation of web-based tools that bring together multiple services in a single, easy-to-use and customer focussed solution that also played a key part in winning the contract.
Welcom will be providing software, consultancy and training services as the prime contractor and will be delivering a high degree of sophisticated systems integration capability for a variety of BAYV and third party systems, such as payment providers, as part of this major contract.
