SMARTS™ to Increase the Agility and Scalability of First Rate’s IT infrastructure
Sparkling Logic announced today at Building Business Capability that First Rate Exchange Services selected SMARTS™ to augment their IT infrastructure. The UK’s largest supplier of foreign currency will leverage SMARTS™ to diversify their customer, product, and market coverage. First Rate is one of the foremost foreign exchange (FX) experts in the industry. With over 15 years’ experience providing travel money solutions, First Rate is now a multi-billion pound retail business.
“At First Rate we are constantly developing our FX offering to anticipate and satisfy the growing market’s needs. Innovation is key to both our success and the success of our customers.” says Nick Collins, Head of Business Solutions. “Sparkling Logic SMARTS™ will enable us to reduce costs and time to market by improving the agility of our systems and enabling the rapid and efficient implementation of business and market driven changes. We chose SMARTS™ for its comprehensive decision management environment with out-of-the-box integration of business rules and predictive analytics. In addition to enabling flexibility in our core systems, SMARTS™ will allow us to proactively manage the business results of our automated decisions.”
Cross-Channel Pricing and Beyond
First Rate will initially use SMARTS™ to implement a cross-channel pricing service to provide quotes for foreign currency requests. First Rate partners with companies such as banks, postal services, retail stores, and travel agents to provide customers with travel money. Customers can request money in over 70 currencies or as prepaid travel money cards in eight currencies. Sales quotes and discounting is determined based on a number of factors. These factors include:
- contractual agreements
- wholesale prices and availability
- seasonal demand and consumer behavior
- marketing and promotion
- competitive pressures
Exchange rates depend on live rates and the new pricing service will enable new levels of speed and flexibility in changing pricing rules. In addition, this new service will replace and eliminate any duplicated logic that exists in the current online and branch-based order capture systems.
Beyond pricing, First Rate has identified several future opportunities for SMARTS™ decision services including enabling alternate delivery addresses for money ordered online and optimizing stock levels.
“First Rate’s unparalleled reputation for customer service and innovation has put them at the forefront of the FX market,” says Carole-Ann Matignon, Sparkling Logic’s CEO. “We are very pleased to have been selected as First Rate’s enterprise decision management solution.“
Additional Resources
About First Rate Exchange Services
First Rate Exchange Services is a joint venture between the Bank of Ireland and the Post Office. Servicing 100 commercial banks in 35 countries, First Rate is UK’s leading foreign exchange supplier. In addition, First Rate is Europe’s premier traveler’s cheque provider and one of the world’s top wholesalers.
Learn more about First Rate at www.firstrate.co.uk
About Sparkling Logic
Sparkling Logic Inc. is a California-based company leading technology innovation in Decision Management. Its SMARTS™ decision management system empowers business experts and business analysts that need to automate and improve business decisions. SMARTS™ uniquely supports the capture of business rules in the context of use cases.
Learn more about Sparkling Logic at www.sparklinglogic.com.
Sparkling Logic, Sparkling Logic SMARTS, RedPen and BluePen are trademarks of Sparkling Logic, Inc. in the United States and in other countries. Patents Pending.