Unlocking Exceptional Customer Engagement with Microsoft Dynamics 365: A Wonga Success Story

With the successful initial phase of the Dynamics 365 Marketing & Customer Service project. Wonga is now looking for a full end-to-end embedded Dynamics platform in their business.

Michael Lazarus, Chief Information Officer

Wonga

Wonga was founded in South Africa in late 2011 as part of the Wonga Group, which had lending operations in the UK, South Africa, Poland, Spain, Canada and Germany. In late 2018 the Wonga Group went into administration which led to the South African business unit being unbundled from the Group, and taken over by a local management buyout. Being a locally managed and owned business allowed Wonga to take a fresh view on consumer credit. Wonga exists to “Help people own their possibilities” – and is a purpose led organisation. As a FinTech that is disrupting the traditional credit space, Wonga measures their success on the positive outcomes for their customers who have hit a cashflow shortfall and, as a responsible lender, will never push them past what they need. They offer short-term cashflow solutions from R500 up to R8000, repayable over 4 days over up to 6 months.

Challenge

Prior to the implementation of Dynamics 365 Marketing & Customer Service, Wonga had been using a solution from a well-known Dynamics 365 competitor which the Wonga South African operation had inherited from the Wonga Group. According to them, the prior solution was overengineered and a complex system for their requirements as a company. It was quite difficult for the Wonga team to have cross-functional integration, in particular between the marketing system and other systems. This presented quite a few challenges for the Wonga team. The duplicate data across several instances that Wonga had was the company’s other major obstacle.

Key Benefits

We are seeing a much bigger yield with customers coming back and updating their details so that we can market to them via an e-mail campaign. It is a revenue driver for us, our business is based on targeting customers, as quick as possible, in a very efficient way.

Frictionless customer engagement across channels

The decision to use Dynamics 365 was easy, according to Wonga’s Chief Technology Officer Michael Lazarus. After unpacking the solutions, everyone in the company felt it was a natural fit, and Michael understood that adoption would occur quicker for everyone. He describes the solutions as perfectly suited for their business needs. “We chose The CRM Team because they are product experts and they had a great understanding of the platform and features we needed to be using”.

Although they are still early in the implementation journey, Michael lists the advantages of utilizing Dynamics 365 as being the simplicity of Adoption and implementation, the ease of cross-business integration, and the solutions’ usability.

“One of the successes so far for the Wonga team is that Dynamics 365 Marketing, has allowed them to track the effectiveness of their marketing emails and show a 4% monthly increase in the number of loan applications from customers through the email channel. Another achievement was the ability to successfully market to clients via SMS.”

Lazarus goes on to say, “We are already receiving reports for bounce rates, which allows us the opportunity to remarket to those customers via an SMS campaign rather than an email. Therefore, we already have bounce- back rates that are logical and simple for us to interpret so that we can launch different marketing tactics to target those customers.

We are seeing improved yields, with customers returning and updating their information so that we can market to them via an email campaign. It is a revenue driver for us, our business is based on targeting customers when they need us, in a very efficient way. Consequently, there has been a significant increase in top of funnel demand, and we will continue to improve on it over the next months.”

Partnering with The CRM Team

“I would definitely recommend The CRM Team if you’re seeking a partner who fully comprehends the Dynamics platform. They really are experts when it comes to the product suites and the integration points of the various services, and it is very astonishing how rapidly the system could be implemented despite the impending deadlines. I absolutely take my hat off to The CRM Team.” – Michael Lazarus said.

Next steps

With the successful initial phase of the Dynamics 365 Marketing & Customer Service project, Wonga is now looking for a full end-to-end embedded Dynamics platform in their business. The next phase is aimed at implementing the HR and Financial component of Dynamics 365.