National Carphones dials in to SaaS

National Carphones is using on-demand CRM software – software as a service (SaaS) - to help boost its growing business.

The mobile equipment fitting company has been using the SaaS CRM software from Netsuite for almost two years and says it has played a major role in efficiency and revenue gains.

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Gordon Anderson, MD of National Carphones, told silicon.com: "Before we had those systems we were running disparate systems, bits here, bits there - using one accounting system, one booking system, one diary, various spreadsheets, that kind of stuff."

Bringing all of these onto one platform has made life much easier for the company’s customer-service staff.

Anderson said: "The whole essence of having everything on a server somewhere in the middle of cyberspace means that we can access our systems anywhere at any time. The fact that it's customisable for different levels of operative as well means that they get the key information that they need in real time."

And with customer service staff being able to process job requests up to three times more quickly this has been achieved without an increase in staff levels.

As a growing company, Anderson said the Netsuite software represented good value as well as being easy to scale up.

He said: "The key thing that we were looking for was the need for the system to grow with us rather than to have to go out and buy bits and add bits on.” National Carphones’ customers are benefiting as well. Anderson said: "It also enables our customers to log in which is a great thing as well. For example BT operatives in India will put job requests on our system."

Of the challenges faced in rolling out the tech, Anderson said: "The hardest part was getting people to understand our business. But we got through that and it's well worth the pain."