Marketing and Information Communications Technology

Service: Marketing and Information Communications Technology | Sector: Private Sector | Industry: Service Sector

Clients Brief

Country House Wedding Venues (CHWV) was created in 1996 as a wedding venues agency. The company developed sole agency rights in 2000 and began working in partnership with event catering companies in 2003. Galloping Gourmet (GG) was acquired in 2004.

CHWV also develop, manage and maintain web-sites for over 50 venues and now act as agents for over 200 venues.

Today, turnover is in excess of £2.5 million with 30+ employees who assist venue owners to develop a wedding product and provide a turnkey management facility. Currently five venues are fully managed by CHWV. It is intended to increase this by one additional venue every nine months.

CHWV had been endeavouring to improve and streamline their systems to meet these business objectives.

The Approach

• Review business operations and processes.
• Determine the overall system needs.
• Determine a system acquisition strategy.
• Identify potential suppliers.
• Assess and select a preferred supplier

The Solution

The proposed implementation was designed for significant impact on business operations, business resilience and profitability. Taking advantage of both ‘open source’ and Microsoft software, it integrated a bespoke Content Management System integrated to a Customer Relationship Management tool and Sage Suite200 financials; plus Voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) technology that informs individual websites and delivers information display in the call centre.

• Four dedicated servers provide a robust, reliable and scalable system, which will allow the management to plan with confidence.
• There will be a reduction of some 20% in administration time and activity. CHWV will improve profitability as revenues grow.
• All areas of the business will be able to provide “best in class” service levels.
• Quotation generation and management will be greatly enhanced for the Galloping Gourmet sites for improved profitability and customer service.
• The company can readily extend the system to allow more “online” transactions and activities for their customers and their venue owners. This provides significant competitive advantage.
• CHWV will be able to utilise the system to extend into new markets and gain leverage from the extensive data held.

Outcome

The SugarCRM software for sales force automation and customer support is a “cloud” application and Sage 200 and the content management system are externally hosted. This allows CHWV to remove a degree of complexity and the associated support needs. It also provides an enhanced business continuity plan.

Quantifiable Benefits

The cost of this solution, including hardware and implementation will be approximately £200k in the first year. This represents significant value for money against the originally proposed bespoke development that was estimated to cost in excess of £250K for the CRM alone.

In June 2010 the company reported its turnover increased from £2.8m to £4m in the past year

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