Case Study: Arvato Cloud-First Strategy

Arvato enables agents to work securely from anywhere, speeding up agility and creating innovative client solutions.

Arvato CRM Solutions is a trusted partner to the private and public sectors, with:

Changing-Up to Cloud-First Strategy

UK customer service operations ran successfully on the Genesys PureConnect Cloud application for six years.

But over time, Arvato wanted a more agile model with quicker onboarding for new clients and a flexible location strategy enabling hybrid or homeworking for agents. This required cloud solutions and their contract renewal with Genesys provided the ideal opportunity to evaluate the market.

“We wanted to consider the merits of a native cloud solution built from the ground-up with an elastic web fabric – and, importantly, what advantages this offered for client onboarding and offboarding, faster service provisioning, and flexible home working,” said Steve Miller, Head of IT, Design and Automation at Arvato CRM Solutions.

Full Workforce Mobility

After evaluating leading solutions, Arvato selected the Genesys Cloud application. “In the end it came down to trust,” said Steve Miller. “We had a brilliant partner in Kerv Experience who supported us throughout the migration.”

As the pandemic and first lockdown hit the UK, call volumes quickly and significantly increased, particularly Arvato public sector and retail customers.

Despite this, Arvato made the seamless switch to remote working. A dedicated team of Kerv Experience engineers supported the journey. For example, by mapping Genesys Cloud and PureConnect data to ensure payroll and client reports were intact, thereby minimizing risk.

“Kerv Experience created a hybrid solution so it was easy to reroute traffic and we didn’t have to worry about complexities like quality of service and load balancing,” said Gordon Dalgleish, Head of IT Solutions, Arvato CRM Solutions.

“We saved money by eliminating call diverts, then added chat and email to lower costs further still.”

Results

1,100 agents can work securely from any location
172 new recruits onboarded in four weeks
Zero disruption to billing and revenue
Savings from faster service rollback and cheaper calls

Achieving Service Improvements

Back-office migration concerns were quickly dispatched, too. Genesys Cloud was integrated with the company’s previous workforce management system, simplifying tasks like resource forecasting and scheduling.

“We have over 100 reports that we rely on to ensure our invoices are accurate and transparent,” added Gordon Dalgleish. “Foehn came up with a handy workaround for shifting everything over to Genesys Cloud, so there was no disruption to client billing and revenue.”

Crucially, Arvato can transition or implement new services and react quickly to business opportunities. For example, onboarding 175 agents for a new client within a short four-week period. Equipped with prebuilt laptops, these agents were trained remotely using Microsoft Teams.

Best of all, Arvato is no longer tied by the geography of its sites. “Our recruitment pool is now location agnostic,” said Steve Miller.

“Having Kerv Experience in our corner is helping us win more business. They always respond, whatever we throw at them. When we’re invited to bid for new contracts they help prototype and develop services in ultra-short timescales.” – Gordon Dalgleish, Head of IT Solutions, Arvato CRM Solutions

Faster Innovation

Arvato regularly develops new solutions such as Automation as a Service, which uses IBM AI-powered
bots and Blue Prism and Microsoft Power Automate for robotic process automation. Genesys AppFoundry has significantly improved the ability to quickly interconnect with other platforms.

Other benefits from moving to Genesys Cloud included reduced support effort and lower cost of ownership.

“Having a purpose-written cloud native solution designed for online use helped improve system performance,” concluded Steve Miller

At a Glance

Customer Name: Arvato CRM Solutions
Industry: Customer Services & Business Process Outsourcing
Location: UK
Company size: 1,100 agents