A time of Transition for PCFG

Finance houses can spend considerable time and effort in dealing with the administration of new proposals. When Private & Commercial Finance Group (PCFG) decided to automate some of its new business processes, it opted for expert help and advice from Transition Computing, a specialist consultancy based in Milton Keynes. PCFG is an independent finance house that provides a wide range of high quality financial products to consumers and businesses. Founded in 1994, the group's shares are quoted on the AIM market, part of the London Stock Exchange. PCFG's Business Finance Division offers lease and hire purchase finance packages. It processes a substantial number of proposals each month, originally using a fax and paper-based system. An interesting proposal Robert Murray, the Business Finance Division's Managing Director, says: "We started looking for a software house that could help us develop a web-based proposals system for our Consumer Motor Finance Division. Transition Computing stepped into the breach and worked closely with us to produce an application that would automate various decisions and the agreement workflow. "This enabled us to reduce turnaround times and provided the support we needed for our future growth plans. Transition Computing has continued to enhance the system and it now handles over 12,000 proposals per month." Separately the Business Finance division was finding that its Microsoft Access-based proposals management system was becoming increasingly outdated and Transition Computing was selected to develop a replacement web-based system. Transition Computing wrote the origination system and also devised the interface with PCFG's contract management system. The new system, eQuote, went live less than a year later, and has greatly reduced the time taken to transfer information to the contract management system. Robert adds: "The benefits of working with Transition Computing include their willingness to acquire a deep understanding of our business and to create the new system to replicate our manual processes rather than just tailoring an off-the-shelf system." A streamlined procedure The new eQuote system incorporates a unique authorisation document that enables PCFG to underwrite a proposal and send it through the authorisation process. This was previously a very paper-intensive and lengthy procedure, but has now been considerably streamlined. Robert continues: "eQuote gives us much better management information and has automated our underwriting decisions. We like the autoload function, which transfers data automatically to our contract administration and accounting systems. "Ultimately, it enables us to offer a faster, more effective and more user-friendly service to our brokers. It also allows us to boost our business volumes without an incremental increase in personnel. We can therefore do more business with the same number of people. I don't really know how we survived without it!"