Bluecycle is an independent company with close ties to Norwich Union, the UK's largest insurer, which has since 2000, designed and applied new web-based systems that have dramatically improved the business of buying and selling commercial assets. The result is a secure and robust trading system that uses state of the art technology to maximum effect.

Bluecycle itself brings buyers and sellers together in an automated environment that offers exceptional levels of value and convenience. It is proud of the fact that it has built in all the security, logistical backup and human help its customers need to allow them to trade with complete confidence.

Bluecycle’s largest areas of business are auto and plant salvage. In just a few years, it has transformed the face of the vehicle salvage market in the UK. It has built a comprehensive salvage operation from the ground-up, encompassing vehicle recovery and storage and online auctioning.  

During this time, the company has auctioned over 350,000 vehicles and built a large customer base of professional salvage buyers.

Its systems are custom designed and backed up with a nationwide logistics network. Users can visit the online auction site and bid at any time of the day or night. All vehicles are checked for outstanding finance issues, before being published on the auction site with full descriptions, detailed damage reports and multiple photographs.  Bidding is simple, and all payments are made online. The system is designed to maximise user convenience, whilst managing a high volume of sales.

Dot Com Success
bluecycle.com itself was launched in 2000 to design and apply Internet-based technology to the insurance industry. Its main focus is the disposal of distressed business assets including auto salvage.

From the start, the company’s objectives were clear - to develop a credible and transparent marketplace that had benefits for both buyers and sellers, to bring new technological efficiency to the salvage disposal process and to generate higher returns for salvage sellers.

Bluecycle has grown steadily over the last eight years, constantly testing and improving the value and reliability of its systems, supporting an expanding community of buyers and sellers and developing into a lean, profitable company that understands the importance of strict budgets and keen margins.

Its robust and trusted trading system uses the web to maximum effect, whilst its dynamic programme of continual improvement keeps it at the cutting edge, making the business a real dotcom success story.

WTG, a business and technology consultancy specialising in innovative web based solutions was chosen by Bluecycle to enhance the existing web based infrastructure.  For the company it was clear that the existing infrastructure had outgrown its functionality and was not able to meet the existing, and more importantly, future business needs of the company. 

Bluecycle made the decision to embark on a programme to re-engineer and reconfigure the site to meet the future business expectations of the company, its employees and those of the broader market as a whole. 

Critically Bluecycle recognised that it needed to undertake a two-stage process:

• Create a new design and build new functionality to all internally facing sections of the existing system to make it more user friendly whilst creating a roadmap of the processes for moving the business onto a new platform
• Roll-out of the new design and functionality to the external site to deliver a more robust and content rich experience for users of the online auction site

Step-by-Step Approach
The Bluecycle website is a critical storefront for the company.  It is a true dot.com, providing a web auction site coupled with a vehicle loss recovery management system.  The site is designed to capture customer information, manage bids, and fulfill orders and process payments.  The website does support a number of mission critical business processes, allowing pre-qualified customers to access auctions and purchase salvage.  However, a lack of flexibility was holding back BlueCycle in achieving its future growth ambitions.

WTG was chosen to enhance the public face look and feel, and to deliver improved internal menu and searching capabilities. The project team focused on providing a more dynamic and appealing user interface to deliver an enhanced user experience. 

WTG working collaboratively with Bluecycle, managed the planning, content analysis and modeling, and brand workshops, as well as the development of site maps and page wire frames. 

Looking at the road ahead
Bluecycle also worked with WTG to help develop a roadmap for the transition of all the company’s processes from the existing platform to a new, more robust infrastructure.

The new infrastructure architecture needed to support a number of existing mission critical business processes, including:

• New vehicle upload: from sources such as RAC Incident Care and AudaBridge Audatex
• Assigning salvage partners
• Vehicle clearance compliance
• Auction management and publication
• Auction bid management and ecommerce fulfillment
• Financial management such as payments processing
• Cancellation or scrap
• Customer care
• Assigning jobs to field engineers

With the growing success of the auction site, it was absolutely critical that the new functionality and enhancements enabled innovation, whilst also providing the flexibility to support existing and future client requirements.

The new infrastructure was based on a modular architecture, which enables many of the common application resources to be re-used.  However, a clear separation of modules from the users’ perspective would create concurrent development paths that in turn would shorten delivery timescales.

WTG working closely with Bluecycle therefore developed a modular architecture based on three business processes: pre-auction, auction and post auction.

• Pre-auction: including Logistics Operations and Token Clearance Platform with integration to third party services including the DVLA, insurance companies and other sources of salvage.  This module also saw the introduction of messaging via SMS and IM or SLA defined decisions to staff within the organisation, or in claims departments, salvage partners and engineers
• Auction: comprising of an ecommerce platform with greater visibility of site-wide bidding behaviour, direct marketing access to CRM, advanced CRM user behaviour tracking, cross selling as well as personalised email marketing
• Post auction: including release authorisation, payment gateway and scrap confirmation.  Enhancements included debtor reporting and budget reconciliation

Business Benefits
 
Through the relationship with WTG, Bluecycle has recorded several important business benefits for both their users and employees:

• The redesign of the internal user interface and menus has increased efficiency, improving the information architecture and user journey through business critical applications;

• By enhancing the internal search function, users are able to find the appropriate information in a more efficient manner with less clicks;

• Refreshed the website to modernise its look and feel has enhanced the range and ease of external interfaces for customers, salvage partners and buyers;

• Increased the capability to deliver faster and better lead-times for the deployment of innovative market solutions through the development of a modular application architecture; and

• WTG also helped deliver a cohesive plan to the Bluecycle board outlining a roadmap for the ongoing development and enhancement of key business applications.