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Thomas Cook centralises Customer Communications without major system redesign
Using solution from Group 1 Software & Pitney Bowes
The company
was seeking a solution that could offer co-ordinated Customer
Communications Management (CCM) with four objectives: taking in customer
data from many sources, making it available through different systems,
creating and standardising documentation for more efficient and effective
production and distribution, and finally storing an archive of customer
communications that can be automatically updated and retrieved to help
answer customer service queries.
Thomas Cook, established in 1841, is the world's best known name in travel.
Employing over 16,000 staff, Thomas Cook operates throughout a network of
1050 locations in the UK and overseas.
Over the last few years, Thomas Cook has grown by acquisition, now
encompassing seven major travel brands, such as Thomas Cook, JMC, Club
18-30 and Neilson. Each brand has its own distinct appeal and has been
retained. Furthermore, Thomas Cook brands sell through several channels –
high street outlets, call centres www.thomascook.com and Thomas Cook
TV. Add to this the fact that Thomas Cook also belongs to 'T4', a
co-operative association of the country's largest travel agents, which
processes orders for each other's products. In systems terms, the Thomas
Cook group of companies found itself running a legacy of many order
processing systems, billing formats, and so on.
The company recognised the need to consolidate this system disparity in
order to deliver consistent and efficient customer service. On the other
hand, the company did not wish to go through the major expense, disruption
and risk of replacing tried and tested operational systems. The solution
would have to be an application that could draw data out Thomas Cook group
companies' legacy system in order to present customers with a consistent
and unified front end, albeit branded to each individual company. It would
also have to achieve this consolidating effect not only across company
systems but also across sales channels.
Marian Manson, Programme Manager, IT and Projects Thomas Cook comments;
"Group 1 Software's DOC1 Series 5 was selected as the most suitable
solution to meet Thomas Cook's objectives. DOC1 provides a fully
integrated solution, which enabled the implementation of our customer
strategy. It was then complemented with software and hardware from
customer communications company Pitney Bowes, in order to provide
end-to-end delivery of customer communications, invoices, tickets and
targeted offers for additional products."
DOC1 Series 5 is the cornerstone of Group 1's Customer Communications
Management (CCM) solution, which simplifies the gathering and manipulation
of data, streamlines document creation and distribution, and ensures that
information is accessible and secure. It is designed to achieve additional
return on investment from existing legacy systems, taking multiple data
sources, processing those inflows into a consistent format, and then
applying that data to billing, marketing communications, analysis or
management information applications.
She further comments, "Major savings on paper stock and batch management
have been achieved using the centralised generate, print and mail system,
while providing a consistent interface with the customer across all brands
and channels. Archive and retrieval is now available online in high street
outlets and in the call centre for customer query handling. Cross-selling
offers can be variably inserted depending on customer purchases, which
makes marketing more targeted.
In short, Thomas Cook has been able to retain its tried and tested legacy
systems, while using the Group 1/Pitney Bowes solution to manage multiple
data streams, improve efficiencies, enhance management information, and
deliver a consistent face to the customer."
About Group 1 Software
Group 1 Software, a wholly owned subsidiary of Pitney Bowes, develops
software that provides an integrated Customer Communication Management
(CCM) solution, which maximizes the value of customer data and improves the
effectiveness of customer communications. Group 1 Software s solutions are
an essential component of enterprise applications, serving to consolidate,
cleanse and enrich corporate data, and generate personalized business
documents for multi-channel delivery, customer care and efficient business
processing. The Company s solutions are utilized by over 3,500
organizations worldwide in the utilities, financial services/banking,
GIS/mapping, retail, telecommunications, insurance and other industries,
including Entergy, L.L. Bean, QVC, Siemens, Wal-Mart and Wells Fargo. For
more information about the Company, visit www.g1.com.
Data Quality Adapter, Group 1 and Group 1 Software are trademarks or
registered trademarks of Group 1 Software, Inc. All other brand names,
trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective
owners.
01/2006, Bilal Mahmood
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