Background
truRating is an innovative company that give retailers access to powerful real time customer insight. At the point of transaction in-store customers are invited to provide feedback by answering a single truRating question about their experience, by ranking it from 0-9 using the payment terminal.
The London based company began trading in January 2015 and has rapidly established an impressive client base of more than 150 retail organisations.
The challenge they faced
This entrepreneurial startup understood the importance of getting the right technology foundations and business processes in place, to ensure a smooth launch and also to support its ambitious global expansion plans.
Management Accountant at truRating, Nick Gent explains: “We knew that before we took the truRating proposition to market we needed a robust and agile front to back office system built around an integrated customer relationship management (CRM) and accounting system.”
The solution
The truRating team was already using Microsoft applications and it recognised that Microsoft Dynamics would be the ideal fit for the business. However, just as important as selecting the right technology was choosing the right partner that could work closely with the company to implement and tailor the solution to its exact specifications.
With Microsoft partner, Advantage Business Systems, located several minutes from truRating’s Central London office, it was a perfect situation, as Gent comments: “In Advantage we found a partner that was eager to work collaboratively with our sales and finance teams both on and offsite throughout the project.” It was an approach which proved to be both reassuring and productive for all involved.
Getting Advantage engaged at the early stages of the company’s formation delivered many benefits. “We were still in the midst of defining our business processes,” explains Gent. “The Advantage team were generous with their time, taking every opportunity to understand what we wanted both now and in the future. Its deep analysis was invaluable, helping us to refine our working practices and match them with process automation to maximise the productivity and performance of our small but rapidly expanding team.”
He adds: “The hard work we all put in at the early stages means today we have a bespoke system that works exactly as we want it to and we have the confidence that it will grow as we do.”
The benefits
Advantage implemented Microsoft’s Dynamics CRM and the ERP (enterprise resource planning) solutions. Together they work in harmony from the moment leads are registered in the system, during the onboarding process as clients are transitioned to full accounts, right the way through to invoicing for the truRating service.
Gent adds:“The solution has been tailored to our specific processes and as it is fully integrated with our Microsoft infrastructure, it is part of the fabric of the business. It just works!”
One of the key aspects of the project was perfecting the billing engine. Clients pay per truRating they receive so it was essential that the system would be able to cope with recording such high volumes of transaction data to simplify the invoicing process.
It was also important that it could handle multi currency transactions. Gent observes: “We work with retailers of all sizes and some have complex environments. The work done by Advantage to integrate Microsoft Dynamics CRM and ERP means our billing process is fully automated and as a result invoices can be issued quicker, resulting in faster payments.”
With Microsoft Dynamics in place truRating is continuing to work with Advantage to ensure the technology is being utilised to its fullest potential to drive the business forward:
“With Sales and Finance already reaping the rewards, we are looking at other areas of the business that could benefit such as marketing.” Gent concludes: “Our relationship with Advantage has been very positive and productive and their team feeling very much like an extension of the truRating team.”
