How Harry Ritchie's Jewelry Streamlined Lending Across 16 Locations

Harry Ritchie's Jewelry operates 16 retail locations across multiple markets, serving customers in the jewelry sector where financing options play a central role in closing sales. The company has built a strong reputation over many years, but maintaining consistency with customer service at each location has been one of its biggest ongoing operational challenges.

The lending process is key to the overall performance of the retail jewelry industry. If the credit decision takes weeks to complete or error rates are high, those missed sale opportunities have a direct impact upon customer satisfaction and ultimately, reduce the revenue. To achieve long-term success for a multi-store retail operation, it was imperative to standardize this process among all store locations.

Harry Ritchie’s Jewelry was facing a number of issues in managing its lending functions across all 16 stores. Every store performed credit evaluations differently, with individual staff applying their own judgment and data points. Identity verification was another major concern, as fraudulent applicants could use false identities to obtain merchandise, resulting in financial losses for the company.

The manual method used to process loan applicants resulted in several layers of inefficiencies. A great deal of time is spent evaluating the credit worthiness of applicants using inconsistent criteria and outdated methods. Problems affecting the business were:

Harry Ritchie’s Jewelry implemented Cloud Maven, Inc’s cmlending to evaluate and process customer credit applications across all 16 locations. The system centralized lending activities and eliminated the inconsistencies associated with the prior processes. The new method replaced different manual workflows with a single, digital process. What would take several approvals and numerous days of processing now completed automatically and consistently across every store.

Some key capabilities include:

• All locations applied identical credit evaluation standards
• Every applicant’s identity was verified in real time
• Customer financial data is automatically collected
• Loan decisions made instantaneously with a common set of rules using pre-defined workflows
• Seamless integration into existing Salesforce infrastructure
• Performance metrics and reports to track activity across all 16 branches.

The deployment was done with no major disruptions to business operations. Throughout this transition, Harry Ritchie’s Jewelry had immense support from Cloud Maven, Inc., so that the employees could adopt the new systems without a hitch and have a reliable system in place from day one. The pre-built templates and accelerators allow for rapid implementations and avoid the need for extensive customizations.

The cmLending transformed the way Harry Ritchie’s Jewelry evaluated loan applications. From an uncoordinated, laborious process, the company moved to a unified process that delivered immediate results.

Key outcomes achieved:

• Eliminated one full-time position dedicated to manual approval work.
• Achieved a 100% reduction in identity fraud, significantly reducing losses.
• Lending error dropped to rates below the average industry standard of 15 – 25%.
• All sixteen locations have uniform data collection and evaluation methods.
• Higher down payments also resulted in less financial loss
• Provided real-time visibility into lending activity across the entire organization.
• Accelerated approvals resulted in faster turnaround times for customers.
• Enhanced team accountability through standardized, measurable processes