COMMUNICATIONS
through for an army of people to re-key into the back-end systems.” In 2005, the company embarked on a project to
equip its advisors with mobile devices in order to streamline its order taking process. Building a proof- of-concept custom application on an early version of Windows Mobile to run on handheld PDAs focused on cost reduction, according to Bond. “We were able to strip vast amounts of cost out of the business and redeploy our people to better support advisors working in customers’ homes,” he said. “Data quality went up straight away. The process of re-keying handwritten orders that had been faxed was prone to inaccuracy, and rectifying issues was costly and inconvenienced customers.” While streamlining the order process by
removing its reliance on paper, Bond said the company still needed to find a way of leaving the customer with a copy of their quote or order confirmation. Hillarys advisors were equipped with mobile thermal printers, which were small enough to carry along with their existing large kit bags of fabric brochures and sample products. “The only option available on the market at the time was Brother,” he explained. “But that was fine because they had everything we needed: an A7 Bluetooth thermal printer that produced good quality paperwork.” Since then a lot has changed, but a remarkable
proportion of the printers are still going strong. “Our product range has grown significantly and the size of our advisor network has also expanded to cope with growing sales – we now supply 30,000 made-to- measure products each week,” Bond said.
Hillarys IT keeps pace with growing product range
“Advisors are recruited for their ability to sell
and fit blinds, rather than because they’re ‘au fait’ with the latest mobile technology. So our solutions need to be quick to learn and intuitive to use - and reliable in the field. We do find that because advisors purchase their own printer, they do tend to look after it. We manage the warranty and technical support relationship with Brother on their behalf, but the devices have proved to be reliable and long lasting and there are plenty of examples of advisors still using their original printer from 2005. Nobody likes to pay out for replacement equipment, but you don’t feel so bad if you’ve had eight years of reliable service from the last one.” The new mobile data and printing systems also
went on to boost sales by improving conversion, in addition to the cost reduction and customer service benefits. But the blinds retailer did not however stop there, it went on to further optimise them. Alongside work to mobilise its salesforce with the latest technologies, it also had embarked on a redesign of its systems and processes, using SAP CRM 7.0 to streamline its customer service.
RetailTechnology.co.uk first reported on work
to redesign its customer relationship management (CRM) application nearly three years ago (Hillarys Blinds improves customer service with SAP, 10 November 2010). But in 2011 the introduction of Windows Phone 7 threatened to render its mobile sales and customer-facing investment in Windows Mobile 6 based systems out of support and surplus to requirements. “We’d had a great run with Microsoft, from 2005 to 2010,” said Bond. “But, with no upgrade
www.retailtechnology.co.uk
Autumn 2013
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