Fundtech Case Study: Fourth Hospitality

Fundtech Case Study: Fourth Hospitality

Bacsactive-IP Enterprise Enables Fastand Resilient Payment Processing

Hosted Service Required to Automated Payments

Fourth Hospitality is the leading provider of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) to the hospitality industry. The company’s range of world-class back-office solutions, specifically designed for the complexity and diversity of the hospitality industry, range from recruitment and payroll through to stock control and financial analysis. London-based Fourth aims to reduce, control and sustain its clients’ wage costs and margins effectively through its web-based systems. Hotel du Vin, Pizza Express, Wagamama and Center Parcs are just some of those clients that have already benefited from the Fourth Hospitality vision: Freeing up your time to serve the customer better.

As Fourth’s payroll service grew, processing payments, especially at busy month-ends, became more and more time-consuming. Fourth wanted to automate its payments process and began looking for a hosted service that could be tailored to its specific requirements. They chose the Bacs approved Bacsactive-IP Enterprise solution with Workflow module from Fundtech.

Monthly Price Plan Negates Large Capital Expenditure

“We reviewed a number of providers, and chose Fundtech Bacsactive-IP primarily for their hosted service. We offer hosted applications to our own customers, and are therefore aware of the benefits they bring. Fundtech invoice on a month-by-month basis, with a manageable capital expenditure at the outset – another important factor” said Farid Taherzadeh, Systems Manager, Fourth Hospitality. Farid continued, “Fundtech was also willing, and able, to carry out its own in-house development for a tailor made solution. Finding a provider that was technologically capable was very important.”

Secure and Resilient Hosting with Bacsactive-IP

Ifor Williams, Fundtech’s Sales Director explains why Bacsactive-IP was able to keep set-up and ongoing development costs to a minimum: “The hosted service means that there are no hardware purchases or software licences to pay. Fourth were able to quickly implement a fully automated payment process with minimum capital expenditure. Fundtech operates dedicated servers and hardware at its secure hosting facilities and provides a fully managed service. The software systems are kept up to date with the latest releases to ensure maximum security and performance.”

Ifor continues, “With the addition of the Workflow module, Fourth have also been able to benefit from a complete platform for payment process management. The Workflow module’s unique set of features and capabilities enables the client to integrate people, processes and systems”. Automated Processes Improve Productivity Fourth processes payroll for many of its clients and the company prides itself on offering unrivalled systems,an exceptional team of people and an extremely effective support service. Fundtech was able to work with Fourth to automate and manage its payment process to allow it to continue to offer the same high standards of service expected by their customers.

As Farid explains, “Making payments used to be a time consuming process – manually creating tasks for each payment and using SMART cards to submit them. Now, as soon as we get the go-ahead from clients, with the click a few buttons the payment is sent and we have confirmation within minutes. The key benefit of automating our payments process has been the amount of time saved, especially at the month end, when we can process hundreds of payruns in an afternoon.”

Exceptional Support

On the rare occasions that there has been a problem, Fourth has found Fundtech to be quick to assist. As Farid explains, “A good example of their level of support was back in March 2007. We had only recently started using the Fundtech service, when Voca suffered a technical glitch that led to a widespread failure of the national Bacs system. With the help of the Fundtech out-of-hours support team and their tireless efforts we were able to submit all of our payruns on time – to the astonishment of our clients.”

Given the success of the Fundtech solution within its payroll bureau, Fourth is now looking to use Bacsactive-IP for automated direct debit collections, and as part of its managed accounting service.

Read the full case study here (pdf).