Omnichannel strategy Currys PC World
One of the largest retail customers of BNP Paribas Personal Finance UK is the Dixons group. Dixons is owner of the major Currys PC World chain of stores, specialists in consumer electronics and household appliances. Together with Currys PC World, BNP Paribas Personal Finance UK launched a new financing product. Flexible cardless credit but with all the omni-channel benefits of a credit card: Your Plan. Using this credit, consumers can make direct purchases at Currys PC World.
Your Plan crosses borders, is fully geared to ease of payment and builds a Mobile First based bridge between the online world of webshops and the offline environment of stores. Customers can therefore easily start their credit application in many different ways: in the Currys PC World Webshop, at the checkout at one of the branches, or in the webshop in advance, and complete their purchase once they are in a shop. The integration between checkout systems, online accounts and credit-rating engines is seamless and slick. As a result, retail staff are free to focus on sales instead of financial advice. While responsible lending is guaranteed by the User Experience, web apps and dashboards of BNP Paribas Personal Finance and consumers are recognised in every channel.
Design, develop and optimise a complete customer journey
A new and sofisticated finance product that increases the ease of payment for the customer
Intelligent business rules
Financial products and repayments might seem easy nowadays because of the ease of use, but the devil is in the details. Specialists in the field of business rules, calculation models and algorithms from iO worked with BNP's Finance department on the calculation models and related visualisations. This collaboration guarantees what the customer sees in the online portal, and thus what they are charged monthly are exactly the same. Also for extra repayments, failed direct debits or extended payment terms.
Whitelabel web portal
The new financing product has been set up fully white-label under the banner of 'Ways2Pay'. For the first launch of this new product together with Currys PC World, Ways2Pay was fully branded and positioned as 'Your Plan'. The design was brought in line with the Currys PC World corporate identity, but at the same time, in compliance with the requirements of credit to suit the serious, administrative side of financial services. The platform was set up fully white-label based on the smart use of CSS and CaaS (Content-as-a-service). Based on the developed workflows, modules and front-ends, Ways2Pay is easy to roll out to other retail contexts. The UK market has thus a new innovative and flexible financing product.
User Experience is leading
In a series of workshops in Birmingham, Belfast and Eindhoven, iO and BNP Paribas jointly developed the underlying workflows and security mechanisms for Your Plan. SMS tokens, scannable barcodes and real-time interfaces played a role in this. Based on the first workflows, prototypes of the UI design were conceived, validated and developed. This means all possible scenarios were defined in detail in advance, which was much needed in the context of financial services.
The Your Plan credit application module is unique and very easy to use. It uses the latest insights in the area of interaction and design to ensure the service is as ‘self-service’ as possible: customers can run their full credit application, themselves online, and receive a credit assessment immediately. All geared to their situation and retail purchase. In the event of an unexpected online failure, or if a customer does not want to follow the process online, an application can be started or completed via the in-store checkout terminals in the Currys PC Worlds, without having to start a new application.
Your Plan, developed jointly by iO and BNP Paribas, focused specifically on transparency, insight and clarity for the customer. While BNP's internal IT specialists set their sights on the integration with the checkout systems of Currys PC World, iO was working on the design and implementation of the customer dashboards. In their ‘My Account’ environment in the mobile first web portal, customers have insight into their credit level at a glance, they can see what still needs to be repaid, they can plan additional repayments, and see what room they have for extra purchases. With integrated cross selling and upselling mechanisms based on configurable business rules, Your Plan adds value to both BNP Paribas’ and Currys PC World’s business growth in a variety of ways.
Middleware as key feature
Using a combination of Java-based REST APIs, Enterprise Integration Patterns, a message bus and proven JavaScript Libraries for graphing, iO ensured the advanced customer dashboards display the right data in real time. Content relating to the visual elements originates from the dotCMS content repository, where it is easy to manage for marketeers.
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