New deal to allow travel firm to expand

Fast-growing transport ticketing company ESP Group has announced a new deal which it claims will help support the firm's ambitious growth plans.

The Hull-based provider of smart transportation schemes announced it has chosen Epicor ERP to supply it with news software to allow it to connect all business critical systems and data sources.

ESP said the deal would allow it to increase efficiency, enhance control and facilitate real-time management.

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This week the company was named as one of the fastest-growing mid-market firms in the country, having seen soar from £9m to £75m in five years.

It said the deal with Epicor ERP will help it manage this rapid growth.

“Not being able to have the control and visibility we needed proved to be a big challenge for the company, information wasn’t accessible from our fingertips as it should have been.

“We recognised quite early on in the business’ growth that we would need to put an ERP system in place to overcome these barriers,” said Michael Longman, chief financial officer.

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“When evaluating the different vendors we looked at a number of criteria including price, scalability, maintenance, product feature-set, track record, customer base, references and ease of use.

“Epicor met these criteria and we felt that it delivered a higher-end solution that better fitted the company’s purposes and would be able to help support our growth ambitions.

“After ESP Group carried out an employee engagement survey, we discovered that the current ways of working in the business were disjointed.

“The Epicor ERP solution will help us to streamline the existing processes and iron out inefficiencies and duplication throughout the business.”

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The ESP Group provides service offerings for smart transportation schemes in the UK and abroad, focusing on issuing, supporting and managing smart tokens such as Oyster Cards. Transport for London, the Association of Train Operating Companies and Go-Ahead Group are among its clients.

In addition ESP also delivers e-commerce web portals, customer relationship management processes and contact-centre support, as well as information services for the travelling public.

Its systems manage more than 15 million travellers.

The company recently launched a series of new B2B services which provide personal travel management for elderly and young people, demographics that either do not run, or want to stop running a car.

Andy Archer, regional vice president for Epicor Software in the UK and Ireland, said: “We are delighted to be able to provide ESP Group with the control and visibility they need in order to support the company’s expansion plans and to remain one step ahead in their competitive global marketplace.”

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An ESP spokesman said: “The company needed to have full control over the profitability of its product and service offerings in order to stay one step ahead in the marketplace.

“The company found its existing accounting systems one dimensional structure prevented it from running the business smoothly and efficiently.”

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