Peninsula

Initially starting out with just a handful of people in a room, over the last 36 years, Peninsula has grown massively, expanding its operations beyond the UK to now include Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. Carl Lancaster has been Group Head of Collections at Peninsula for the last 14 years.

In the past five years, Peninsula has acquired and absorbed a number of companies worldwide. Carl Lancaster explained: “As we grew, it became clear that our existing credit management systems weren’t able to cope with the growing volume of transactions and the influx of business we were experiencing as a result of the acquisitions.” Based on this, Peninsula decided it was time to look for a new credit management solution. Peninsula invited the top five credit management software companies to pitch their solutions in order for it to decide which was would be bestsuited to its business. Following tender negotiations, the decision was made to adopt Onguard’s CreditManager.

When looking at a new credit management software solution, Peninsula had several requirements. Not only was it vital that the new system could deal with the large volume of transactions Peninsula was processing but it was also required to consolidate all debts across the group. Peninsula also wanted the solution to improve the quality of communication with clients, both in terms of its visual impact and its content, produce consistent outputs an d improve the resultant reporting.

According to Lancaster: “We chose Onguard primarily due to the fact it offers greater flexibility in terms of its workflow integration. We also saw that there would be potential in the future to take on new features and gain a wider range of capabilities should we want to. Additionally, we found that it offered a great user-experience as the software is user-friendly and intuitive.”

“We have realised a number of benefits since implementing CreditManager in two of our companies, with cashflow having increased by about 20%. Also, we have a high volume of clients with about 100,000 customers over the client base and the new system has enabled us to communicate with these customers as and when we want to. Before, all the activity was manual, so we have experienced a huge amount of time-saving as a result of the new software. It has allowed us to automate the dunning process for all clients which is a real benefit for us. It has also facilitated a root to branch refresh of what we used to do and why we used to do it and has caused us to pause and think about this and then go again on a new system.”

The time-savings generated by automating the dunning process has allowed Peninsula to focus on more value-adding tasks. “CreditManager has enabled us to focus on the higher value accounts whereas before we had to play a volume game. Now, we can be more selective about what we do because Onguard will help us automate certain processes and handle some of the communication for the accounts with less activity. We can then focus on the bigger clients or those that may be more problematic.”

“Additionally, CreditManager has allowed us to create a consolidated structure around our credit management processes and given us greater organisation thanks to the workflows it provides. This makes it easier for us to plan our work on a day-to-day basis, as well as the future work balance across the team. While these factors are in operation daily, they are processes that will inspire longer-term benefits, allowing us to save time and effort.”

“CreditManager ensures we have everything in one place and that it is accessible by the entire team which has made it easier to understand where things stand, if we are up-to-date or behind and how many emails are outstanding, for example. Since we started using CreditManager, we have seen card payment averages double per day, seen email response rates increase and our ability to follow up has improved.”

“Onguard has been very involved in the implementation of the new software and has been key to the delivery. The biggest input of CreditManager for us has been in the configuration of our data, which gets uploaded into the system, and the communication builder, which creates communications on the back of the data,” added Lancaster. “The system is currently live in two of our ten companies and we are rolling it out across the rest of the Peninsula Group in the UK and Ireland before implementing it in Canada, Australia and New Zealand. We have felt supported by Onguard throughout the implementation process and are confident knowing that the helpdesk is on-hand to resolve issues quickly should we need extra support. We are convinced we made the right decision in choosing Onguard, implementation has been running smoothly and we are happy with what the solution has allowed us to achieve so far.”

• Increased cash flow by 20%
• Card payments have doubled per day
• Smooth implementation
• Improved customer communication