Background
 

SSL International owns a number of leading global brands, including Durex and Scholl, plus a number of locally-owned brands, such as Cuprofen and
 

Syndol in the UK, and Sauber and Mister Baby in Southern Europe. The company has operations in 35 countries across Europe, Asia Pacific and the Americas, which sell into over 100 countries worldwide. It also has manufacturing operations in India, Thailand, China and the UK, and employs around 5,000 people globally.
 

Situation
 

In 2008, SSL International embarked on a strategy to make as many of its products available to consumers online. As part of that process, it wanted to put in place a contact data management (CDM) solution that would enable customers to enter their contact details quickly and easily, and in a consistent fashion on each brand’s website.

SSL International was already using Experian QAS’s address capture software; QAS Pro, as part of its Consumer Response System (CRS). SSL International uses the CRS system to deal with any consumer enquiry. The system also enables customers to place orders over
the phone.
 

The CRS agents use QAS Pro to verify customers’ address details and simplify data entry, so that the right goods are sent to the right person at the right address.
 

Solution

Owing to the success that SSL International has experienced with QAS Pro in its CRS application, the company selected QAS Pro On Demand as the address capture solution for its online operations. The solution has been adopted for SSL International’s Durex and Scholl websites in the UK, and will now be considered for each further roll out across SSL’s global markets.
 

In addition to deploying QAS Pro On Demand on its websites, SSL International uses QAS Batch with Suppression to clean its customer and prospect database, which has been compiled over many years from a variety of sources, including third-party opt-in lists and magazine competitions. QAS Batch with Suppression is used to tidy up the database, removing or updating the contact information of people who have died or moved house.
 

Results

With QAS Pro On Demand, customers buying goods via the Durex and Scholl websites simply have to enter their name and postcode: the rest of the address fields are populated automatically. “We use QAS Pro On Demand to improve the customer journey, from the moment they arrive at the website to the moment they checkout,” explains SSL International’s Digital Solutions Manager, Andrew Wootton. “Experian QAS significantly simplifies contact data entry for our customers.”
“Experian QAS has been running on the website since April 2009,” he says. “It’s used at least once, sometimes twice per order, where the billing and delivery address are not the same, and we have not had any issues whatsoever. It works every time.” Andrew estimates that around 40,000 people per year are validating their contact details on the Scholl and Durex websites.
 

Andrew is equally satisfied with QAS Batch with Suppression. SSL International had a number of databases that had been merged, some of which were a year old, therefore SSL International needed to clean, maintain and suppress the customer contact data it held. The results were that out of a total 68,998 records cleaned across three brands: Orthaheel, Scholl and Durex - 40,081 records were verified as being correct, with an additional 22,044 cleaned up and corrected by the Experian QAS software, representing a 55 per cent uplift in correct contact data.
 

Maintaining the quality of their data helps ensure that communications are sent to the right contacts. “We definitely felt the benefit of using this software,” says Andrew. “We are in a much better position now than we were beforehand.”
 

Future plans

SSL International is looking to roll out its online strategy to other territories, and Andrew says the company aims to incorporate Experian QAS into its plans. “We like to build partnerships with companies like Experian QAS that can offer a global solution,” he says. “In emerging markets like Russia and China that are still very immature, we can benefit from the work that Experian QAS has done to identify accurate contact information in those markets.”