The Woolwich Plc was founded in 1847 and was one of the first "permanent" building societies. In July 1997 it became a plc and was taken over by Barclays Plc in 2000.

A requirement for speed and accuracy

Also in 2000 the Woolwich implemented the Group Application Process (GAP), a single strategic sales system to be used in all Woolwich branches and Contact Centre teams. It is essentially an electronic application form which seeks to simplify the customer process by offering a one-stop data capture method which disseminates accurate information internally. This is to help the Woolwich towards their vision of being a ‘Bank with a Memory’.

To facilitate GAP, the Woolwich needed to be able to capture address information quickly and accurately, to enhance customer and staff satisfaction at the point of sale or investment. The ability to validate address information was also essential. After investigating several potential suppliers, the Woolwich chose QuickAddress Pro from QAS as the product of choice to fulfil these needs.

In addition, applications to open an account with the Woolwich (or carry out other transactions) can require multiple address look-ups during a single application and therefore the ability to reduce data capture in a timely manner is of high importance. Woolwich chose QuickAddress to deal with the application volume and return accurate address information instantly.

Ease of integration

In addition to these business benefits, QuickAddress was chosen for its ease of integration and high level of technical support. Steve Cook, Project Manager at Barclays, Enable, says:

“With a complex and fully integrated sales system in place at the Woolwich, ease of integration was of maximum importance. QuickAddress was straightforward to incorporate and the updates are easy to apply. QAS offered skilled assistance to ensure that the installation and integration delivered optimum performance.”

Bringing benefits to the Woolwich

Reducing the time required to capture information in front of the customer is key to GAP, and the integration of QuickAddress means that address data can be captured accurately and validated with the customer present. In addition, it can help staff to decipher hand written applications. This saves a great deal of time in Quality Assurance work and removes the need to recontact the customer post sale.

With around 7,000 applications and quotations being processed by GAP each week, there is much scope for addressing error. Steve Cook says:

“QuickAddress and GAP work well together to ensure that all mandatory fields are entered and validated at the point of sale. This has led to a vast improvement in the quality of customer information captured and held. In addition, customer perception has definitely improved since we started using GAP with QuickAddress.

“Customers expect address information to be pre-populated and Woolwich wants to be better than the competition in this area. Using key components including QuickAddress within bespoke applications is of paramount importance in achieving business benefits whilst enhancing the sales experience for staff and customers alike.”