A bpodr Case Study
Chase Inventory Services
Chase Inventory Services is one of the UK's leading providers of inventories and associated services to lettings agents, councils, housing associations, property groups, and private landlords. Turnover is increasing rapidly year on year and the Chase web site plays a large part in reinforcing the company’s brand values and the quality of its service.
The Need
For a number of years, Chase grew steadily as a result of word-of-mouth recommendation and a consistent quality of service. However, MD Laura Stewart saw an opportunity to increase the speed of growth by using the internet as a way of reinforcing her company’s reputation. This would put the web site at the heart of the business, as well as making digital opportunities a game changer in terms of competitive advantage and cost reduction.
Its existing hosting company, while both friendly and competent, couldn’t offer the flexibility of response required to make rapid changes to the site or to create and amend email accounts quickly. This latter was especially vital when the number of Chase inventory clerks passed twenty and there was a constant need for forwarding emails to covering clerks when holidays or sickness threatened to disrupt day-to-
day working. Equally, Chase didn’t feel it could justify a full-time staff member to run its web site. A part- time position would, of course, encounter the existing limitations when needing to liaise with the external hosting company.
The Chase web site was looking outdated and didn’t convey the level of professional service that Chase offered. More than that, it was similar in its look and feel to many other competitor web sites.
Chase also wanted to store their growing collection of reports on-line and make it easy for clerks and clients to access this collection securely. The costs of sending reports by mail was escalating and electronic delivery would bring large savings.
"On many occasions, after landing new business, our client tells us that it was our web site more than anything else that first suggested we would be more professional and capable than our competitors."
The Solution
It was agreed that the existing Chase site was not in keeping with the company’s reputation and, as part of the transfer to the bpodr hosting service, we undertook a site redesign. (Our network of contacts allows us to find the perfect match for any job that lies outside the core skill set of bpodr itself. Graphic design is one of the areas we are happy to leave to experts.)
The new site was designed and built within a month. As part of the build, we added a secure back-end that allows authorised Chase users to upload and access completed inventories and reports. There is also the functionality for designated users to create news articles, add new clients, and upload client testimonials.
With the number of uploaded documents growing weekly, we decided to use Amazon’s S3 web service for long-term storage. This is a cost-effective method of storing large numbers of files and means the Chase server itself will never run out of storage space.
The old web site performed poorly in search engine rankings, so we ensured that the new site was optimised from the start for many of the key terms prospective clients would use to find the Chase service. As part of this process, we installed analytics tags to ensure Chase would always be aware of visitor numbers, where visitors came from, and what they did on the Chase site when they got there.
When Chase need to make changes to the site - for things like Christmas period
working dates or new price lists, etc. - bpodr will have the changes implemented and on-line in minutes. This gives Chase the confidence that they can respond to a changing market with little lead time. The same goes for managing their growing number of email accounts. As soon as a request is raised, the changes are made and a new email account is active or its mailbox is forwarded to a different user.
The Benefits
» The Chase web site is at the top of the search engine rankings for the appropriate key terms
» Increased business: councils, agents, and private landlords cite the web site as best of breed and primary reason for investigating Chase further
» Digital document storage and distribution has reduced costs and differentiates Chase from its competitors
» Chase has been chosen by the DPS to be the only inventory company it recommends to produce work of a standard guaranteed to meet the requirements of dispute resolution adjudicators
"What it comes down to is that Chase has its own IT department constantly available at a fraction of the cost of hiring our own team. As the relationship grows and bpodr comes to know our business better and better, they’re also able to suggest ways in which the web can continue to improve our bottom line.
Working with bpodr gives us the confidence to concentrate on the business, knowing that our web site and database are in safe hands."