London, UK. – 28th April, 2009 - Vodafone Applications Group , previously known as Aspective and leading provider of Microsoft Dynamics CRM solutions, today announced that the British Library, one of the world’s largest research libraries and a leading supplier of research documents and information, has noted significant improvements in its customer care programme as a result of the deployment of Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

The British Library is a non-departmental public body with over 150,000 current readers & 12,000 remote customers. Being able to understand the nature of their interactions with the institution was key to maintaining a good level of customer service and meeting all their needs. Historically, customer data was held across 37 disparate databases, making it difficult to gain a transparent view of the various relationships that existed. The British Library strived to be able to understand the size of these relationships and how they could be centralised and better managed.

The British Library embarked on a search for a tool that would meet their needs and from the beginning, Microsoft Dynamics CRM was a strong contender. A key requirement was the ability to deploy a solution that would integrate well with the existing EIS architecture and that would also be user friendly. It was also considered essential to engage with a partner who would help them to optimise the system, improve the business processes surrounding integration and achieve the overall goals of improving efficiency & delighting the customer.

In 2004, Aspective (now Vodafone Applications Group) was selected due to its strong track record of implementing solutions based on Microsoft Dynamics CRM. This gave the British Library the confidence to engage in such a large scale deployment and work collaboratively with the integrator to help achieve its goals. By forging this solid partnership that was tailored to suit the Library’s individual needs, the project was initiated and resulted in a seamless deployment for all involved.

Four years later, there are now over 250,000 contacts in one centralised system and the Customer Services team has a clear overview of which customers have more than one relationship with the British Library. By realising its goal of a single point of contact with all customer details being located in one place, requests can be instantly logged and actioned as they come in. CRM will also support the BL plan to disengage legacy systems which are unreliable & inefficient.

“With so much customer information spreading across a number of different databases, it was becoming hard for our team to maintain the required level of service expected from an institution such as the British Library. CRM was a step change for the BL, Vodafone Applications Group brought technical expertise & project support that allowed a seamless change,” said Andy Appleyard, Head of Document Supply & Customer Services at the British Library. “Streamlining all systems in to one single point of customer contact has made a huge difference and we are now able to tailor our service provision in order to achieve our aims of delighting end users & reducing internal costs.”

“The British Library was an extremely substantial project and required a high level of trust in the right partner to deliver. Five years down the line, we are still helping them to aim high and improve customer experience as well as increase staff productivity through CRM,” said Robin Skinner, Head of Applications Business Group, Vodafone UK.

As a result of the success of the initial CRM installation, other areas of the library are now looking to improve their work processes with the vision that CRM will become the ‘Hub’ of all British Library customer data.

About Vodafone

Vodafone is the world's leading international mobile communications group with approximately 280 million proportionate customers as of 30 September 2008. Vodafone currently has equity interests in 27 countries across five continents and over 40 partner networks worldwide. For more information, please visit www.vodafone.com

About The British Library

The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom. It provides world-class information services to the academic, business, research and scientific communities and offers unparalleled access to the world’s largest and most comprehensive research collection. Further information is available on the Library's website at www.bl.uk, which currently receives almost 2 million 'hits' or visits per month.