Maplewave Point Of Sale - Flow

Summary

In 2015, Cable & Wireless rebranded as Flow and undertook a 5-year investment project to renew their customer experience and regain their leadership position in the Caribbean. Suffering from transaction times of over 40 minutes, and a fragmented and archaic customer journey, Flow needed to act fast to transform their retail systems and productivity across the board.

Bio

In 2015, Cable & Wireless operated in 15 markets across the Caribbean and provided a mixture of wireless and fixed-line services in different markets.

Cable & Wireless had 200 retail stores in the region, all operating under the out-going LIME branding. They rebranded as Flow, and determined they were also in need of a retail system overhaul.

Faced with heavy competition in their market, they agreed to a merger with Columbus Communications, which dramatically increased their fixed-line capability across the region. This change allowed them to offer a quad-play, converged product in many markets.

Pain Points

In many markets, Flow stores were community hubs that experienced high footfall. However, as the incumbent wireless provider in many markets, investment had been slow and was often difficult to justify, given some of the low ARPU returns in some markets.

The in-store customer journey was fragmented which resulted in long queues. While the wait was tolerated by customers, negative NPS scores were common.

Flow’s systems were outdated. Their basic POS system did not give any visibility to the regional head office in Miami. Transaction times were slow and required a plethora of paper to be printed, signed, and counter-signed – often with multiple back-office passes to ensure the connection was completed.

Flow needed a quick, modern solution that could cut transaction times to the industry standard of 15 minutes postpaid, and 5 minutes prepaid.

With a lack of in-store accessory offerings, Flow also needed a system that could manage this complex category using a consignment model. This was an important enhancement to their customer experience.

Challenges

Navigating the complex billing architecture was the first challenge. The project was split into two phases, with Phase 1 designed to supercharge the prepaid experience and integrate into these systems.

Phase 2 was the deeper integration into fixed-line solutions. This would occur after the first of group of markets had been completed.

The Solution

Maplewave was contracted to deploy many parts of our retail platform. The most crucial piece was the Point of Sale module; this fast, connected solution caused Flow’s transaction times to plummet while increasing accuracy.

The first test stores were deployed in the Cayman Islands. After additional proof of concept rollouts in Barbados, the rest of the markets were brought on board.

Maplewave’s POS not only made the in-store experience  faster and more fluid, but our Paperless Transactions solution removed all the paper passes from the stores. Our Inventory Management solution gave their regional head office visibility into all stock levels across the board for the first time ever.

Results

• Prepaid transaction times were reduced from 15 minutes to 5 minutes.
• Postpaid transactions fell from over 45 minutes in some markets to less than 15 minutes.

Conclusion

Many telcos continue to struggle with unintegrated legacy systems, which causes the customer experience to suffer. The core systems that power a store need to be fast, intuitive, and easy to use. No matter how complex the environment, Maplewave makes retail transformations possible.