Barclaycard delivers customer efficiencies with The IQ Business Group

The IQ Business Group, a global provider of practical business solutions, has entered into an agreement with Europe`s largest credit card issuer, Barclaycard, to provide business process engineering expertise aimed at streamlining the Barclaycard customer experience.

The appointment of The IQ Business Group is testament both to the growing respect South African businesses are achieving with major international clients and to the high degree of international mobility within The IQ Business Group workforce - critical to helping Barclaycard achieve its goals.

"Initially the relationship will be one where The IQ Business Group assists Barclaycard on a few select initiatives that are primed for business process improvements. Process engineering to the level and detail required by a financial services giant like Barclaycard needs to be effectively put into practice and the organisation is seeing huge opportunities to save costs and get economies of scale by implementing best practice processes throughout the customer experience," says Philip Raine, who heads up The IQ Business Group UK operation.

A principal reason The IQ Business Group`s service provision model is appealing to Barclaycard is its ability to be mobile. The project, while being run from the United Kingdom offices, will make use of South African resources who will be based on-site.

"We have a very mobile workforce, which cannot be underestimated. It`s no good having a pool of talent that is not willing or able to be where the problem is. We can take our A-team to away games where the competition either sends a B-team or doesn`t turn up for the game," says Raine.

With Barclays Bank`s recent re-entry into the South African marketplace through its acquisition of Absa, Raine sees great potential to extend this relationship onto home territory through a strategy that delivers on the priorities and expectations of the new Barclays/Absa entity.