At the company’s recent user forum, Webline asked its customers to identify specific system enhancements and services they would like to see available to them over the coming months. The most popular suggestions have now been scoped out and are already in development.
The main focus of the selected enhancements was on providing advisers with additional, easy-to-use comparison facilities, which would allow them to show and explain to clients, the effects of including (or removing) certain benefits from an overall package of products. This will enable advisers to better service their clients by ensuring recommended products closely match a client’s demands and needs. Additionally, this matching process inherently provides opportunities for advisers to up-sell products to a client that they may not initially had knowledge of.
The second area of development focussed on providing additional management information relating to advisers’ Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).
Matt Humphrey, client & operations director at Webline, said: “The User Forum model is a great way of making sure our thinking and developments are totally in line with what advisers actually want. At the beginning of the year, we contacted a selection of our customers to find out what their priorities were for the year ahead and what we, in software development terms, could do to help them achieve these objectives.
“Following this fact-finding exercise, 30 of our largest users were then invited to our User Forum where they were able to specify exactly which tools they wanted to see developed. It became evident that there were four clear developments for us to focus on and we estimate that the projects most in demand would cost around a quarter of a million pounds in total to develop. We will be holding further User Forums later in the year to update on progress and get further feedback.”
Over the next 12 months, Webline will be rolling out the finished products, and the first one, should be available by the end of the summer.
