Ciret

The challenge

 Originally established as Home Key Limited in 1961 by David Roulston, the company went from strength to strength, eventually becoming part of the Ciret Holding Group in 2005.

This resulted in an expansion to a brand new location in Havant, Hampshire, with 105,000 square feet of warehouse space, and in 2011 Ciret merged with Storch Holding GmbH, becoming Storch-Ciret Holding GmbH with the group’s headquarters in Wuppertal, Germany.

2012 saw Ciret acquire the Robert J Hall business including strong brands including Red Devil, Stanley, Beeline and Mosley-Stone. 

 Now a part of the leading provider of painting and decorating tools in Europe, and growth not showing any signs of a slow down, David Corbett, Ciret’s Financial Controller, had been searching for a solution to their payment processing issues, one of which was resolving the issue of late payments. 

 David explains that most of the payments were being made via BACS, however there were still many card payments that the company was taking via a virtual terminal using their previous provider.

 With their previous provider, the issue of late payments became problematic as on many occasions, customers were not finding the payment process to be straightforward, and the resulting late payments meant reduced cash flow for Ciret. 

 In addition to this, taking payments via their virtual terminal meant long calls with customers and on certain occasions, the incorrect entering of customer details resulting in having to recapture these details. These factors, along with poor reporting were causing a multitude of problems for David and his team.

The solution

 The team at Blink carefully analysed the specific problems that David and his team at Ciret were looking to solve, and organised a detailed demo of the platform to explain all the features and how they could help Ciret, effectively providing a multi pronged solution to their issues. 

Put simply, David said “We’re very pleased with the user-friendly nature of the platform, and the fact we can send payment links with reminders will certainly benefit us effective immediately”.

As one of the most prominent issues was late payments and the knock on effect on cashflow, Blink explained how their platform could be integrated into Ciret’s payment taking process, and therefore dramatically cut down on the amount of late payments.

It was evident that being able to send customers a payment link, as well as payment reminders was going to be critical in reducing the amount of late payments and accruing higher outstanding payment balances. These features, along with providing Ciret with tokenisation to store customers’ card details, eliminating the need for long phone calls and wait times would greatly improve the overall experience for both parties. 

The ability to deploy a batch payments system to collect outstanding charges would also help reduce the amount of outstanding payments on record. 

Open banking has been an incredibly effective and reliable payment system, and at Blink we felt that the implementation of this would enhance Ciret’s payment processing system. 

With the majority of Ciret’s business being BACS focused, an open banking system was implemented to help create a faster, more secure and more convenient payment process, with the added benefit of alleviating any potentially fraudulent payments.

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The outcome

Over the past year, Blink has helped Ciret with several problems with their payment processes, starting with the reduction in late payments thus helping the business with any cashflow bottlenecks. 

David also mentioned how the ability to benefit from open banking has provided a better customer experience, especially when you factor in the ability to send every customer a payment link via e-mail or text message. 

Blink’s advanced open banking and reporting system has given David and his colleagues both a snapshot within a few clicks, but also a detailed view of specific clients’ payments and track record with the company. 

Blink’s virtual terminal, which has done away with the old system, has improved the customer experience and also significantly reduced the time it takes for payments to be made. 

It’s safe to say that tokenisation has been one of David’s favourite aspects of the Blink platform, as customer’s card details can be safely and securely stored so the process is automated and customers don’t have to be on the phone for extended periods of time when making a payment. 

This, combined with the open banking aspect, has allowed payments to be cleared within seconds and offers Ciret additional peace of mind knowing that the requirement of authentication for each payment hugely reduces the risk of fraud. 

David has said how, “The whole process from initial contact to the demo and after-sales support has been nothing short of exceptional, and I’m excited to continue our relationship with Blink as we grow further”.

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