2004 C.I.P.A. Winners

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Dell Financial Services Canada Limited

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Canada’s first ‘signatureless’ financing solution supports a more than 200% revenue increase

Dell Financial Services Canada Limited (DFS) provides financial solutions and comprehensive asset services to Canadian customers of Dell. Its new Helix solution has transformed DFS into a model of efficiency across its core operations. DFS enjoyed a 1200 percent increase in annual consumer applications processed through Helix and a 208 percent increase in revenue without an increase in staff.

Challenge

DFS has operated out of a single location in Canada since 1997 with approximately 80 staff. It has provided equipment financing in excess of $1 billion to Canadian customers. In Dell’s Home and Small Business segment, however, there were special challenges.

Unlike the average "walk-in" sales outlet, the Dell sales team in this segment never sees the customer. "Closing the deal" was essentially a two-part process: sales (which took minutes) and financing (which took days). These delays impacted customer/employee satisfaction and the successful closure of financed deals. This in turn reduced commissions and revenues. The challenge for DFS, therefore, was significant – how to profoundly change the financing process, while ensuring full business continuity for two partner organizations?

Objectives

Dell wanted to bring its "one call, one sale" strategy to this segment; but to get there, DFS needed to design a new sales process that would:

• Give the Dell sales team the tools they needed to sell financing during the initial sales call;

• Reduce the turnaround time for credit approvals. DFS had previously been using a third-party service provider for this process; and

• Streamline and simplify the exchange of information between the Dell sales team and DFS.

The overriding goal was to speed the sales, credit and fraud evaluation processes for DFS leases and installment loans.

Solution

The DFS project team set out to build a new financial sales process that would set new standards for the industry. The initiative, called "Helix", provides:

• The first ‘signatureless’ capability for financial products in Canada. Many technical and process challenges had to be addressed to gain acceptance and deliver a financial agreement to customers within seconds of an online or telesales transaction without a ‘wet signature’. A highly complex credit and fraud scoring module. This replaces DFS’s previous third-party solution.

• A radically simplified user interface. This enables Dell sales representatives to sell financing as part of the inbound sales call rather than having to transfer the client to a DFS expert.

• Automated auditing processes, which enable exception processing and reduce manual audits.

Helix supports both online and offline (telesales) processes for Canada from three countries.

Innovative Use of Technology

DFS had a history of achieving modest technology-related improvements. Business expectations for the Helix project were, therefore, similarly modest. The successes delivered by the newly formed Change Management & IT group, however, surpassed all expectations.

The Helix innovations resulted in a financial sales process that set new standards for the industry. Dell sales staff can now sell financial products on the initial sales call. And, what once took days can now be completed in less than two minutes.

As a result, customer/employee satisfaction and Dell/DFS revenues have all increased dramatically. Specific benefits include:

• Increased volume of annual consumer applications processed through Helix 1200 percent and increased revenue of 208 percent without increasing staff.

• Reduced the documentation process from 2-5 days to less than one second with Signatureless Financing via email and fax.

• Reduced the four-hour turnaround time on over 60 percent of applications to less than six seconds for all applications with Instant Credit and Fraud Adjudication. This has reduced DFS’s costs by $150,000 annually and ensured 100 percent automated adjudication in 5-8 seconds.

• Reduced financial sales cycle from 15 minutes to 2 minutes due to radically simplified user and real-time interfaces between Dell and DFS, and improved workflow management for exception processing.

• Enabled exception processing and reduced manual audits from 100 percent to below 40 percent with automated auditing processes.

Helix also meets the essential Sarbanes-Oxley audit and documentation standards which are now shaping the financial services industry.

According to Kevin Northrup, Director, Change Management and IT, implementing Helix was like having a team of five people change all four tires on a car moving 50 km/h. "We have very knowledgeable people who run our business every day. But to grow our business and take it to a new level, we had to go beyond the familiar and attempt the extraordinary. We unleashed the imagination of our project team and created a solution that has transformed our business to the nth degree. We are now moving our business forward at over 200 km/h," says Northrup.

A 2004 CIPA Winner!

For its exceptional and innovative application of Information Technology to solve real-world business problems and bring greater benefit to all its stakeholders, Dell Financial Services Canada Limited was awarded a 2004 Canadian Information Productivity Award of Excellence in the Organizational Transformation category.

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