Innovative retailer Buy As You View has invested in a carbon-busting from Paragon Software Systems to improve efficiency and cut costs throughout its coinmeter repayment business. The new software will help the company to proactively reduce mileage, improve fuel usage and lower the emissions from its 500-strong fleet of home delivery and service vehicles.
Paragon Multi Depot software will replace manual route planning, which is performed by each of its regional offices. The software will be used for automatic and accurate daily planning of Buy As You View deliveries and regular customer visits, boosting efficiencies and service, while enabling 'greener' UK-wide operations.
"Paragon's software will enable us to improve our distribution operation, cut costs and reduce our corporate carbon footprint by up to 20 per cent. This will benefit our customers, our employees, the company and the environment," says Andrew Deeley, Commercial Director, Buy As You View.
"The decision to purchase Paragon was an easy one," adds Deeley. "With just under 100,000 customers Paragon made pretty short work of creating optimum rounds for our 160 collectors. We had tried about six months earlier to achieve the same thing with another system but it was so rigid we couldn't adapt it to suit our needs. Having witnessed Paragon in action and utilised the output to drive our round optimisation program, making the decision to purchase the system to continuously optimise and also route plan our weekly collection rounds was an easy thing to do," he adds.
Buy As You View provides a convenient way to purchase and finance electrical and household goods. Customers select their purchases from a catalogue and pay for them using a coinmeter. Dedicated account managers collect instalments on an eight-weekly basis, making 80 to 90 customer visits each per week over a 5-mile radius.
"Our business revolves around customers' homes. Goods purchased from our catalogue are delivered direct to the home. With 500 vehicles being used to make up to 90 visits each week - that's a weekly total of around 45,000 cash collection or deliveries across the UK - we need to optimise our planning. Paragon software allows us to do this automatically, enabling us to streamline our distribution operation and measure our efficiencies over time."
Buy As You View Limited is headquartered in Bridgend, South Wales and provides a coinmeter repayment and credit facility which enables its customers to finance and plan their purchases in a convenient and manageable way. The company has regional offices in Sunderland, Yorkshire, the midlands, North West England and Scotland.