Whether it’s football, basketball, volleyball, or pickleball, sports fans and athletes around the globe trust Baden to provide the finest balls for their games. Founded in 1979, Baden has been producing high quality and great value balls designed to make the game better for the players. While they continue to change the game for players through discoveries in new sports technologies, their business leaders also knew they needed to elevate their services for their customers and partners.
Selling balls anywhere games are played is no small operation and Baden’s business model is true omnichannel, supporting all forms of sales including direct to consumer via their website, through resellers ranging from small home grown operations up to the largest sellers like Walmart, and through partner organizations and associations.
A Focus on Improving the Customer Experience
With a diverse customer base, Baden wanted to ensure that placing orders and making payments was actually convenient, no matter how a customer wanted to pay. Unfortunately, that wasn’t always the case. With an outdated ERP solution, their AR team was manually processing credit card authorization forms and the process was less than efficient.
Working with Microsoft partner RSM, Baden implemented Dynamics 365 Business Central to streamline and modernize their operations. They chose a solution for processing payments and the entire system went live.
Three months after go-live, Schindler realized the only issue they were having with their new system was the payment processing vendor they selected. They were receiving negative feedback not only from their internal users, but also from customers who expected a more user-friendly payment process.
“We realized we made a big mistake. The payment solution we implemented was PCI compliant but without the integration to Business Central, we still had manual processes. We were relying on the customer to input their order number and payment amount manually and then AR team had to download and enter that information in Business Central. Meanwhile, the customer success team had no visibility of where transactions stood. At best, it was “clunky” and more often is was frustrating and barely functional,” said Casey Schindler, COO of Baden Sports.
iSolutions Provides the Answer
Deciding an immediate change was needed, the Baden team researched various options for payment processing in BC. They evaluated two software options – iSolutions and a competitor. While the competitor came in at a lower implementation and annual price, the value that additional benefits and features that iSolutions provides made the selection a no-brainer.
“One of the best things about iSolutions is the customer portal. It’s so great and we didn’t expect to get it out of a payment processor. Customers reach out to ask for tracking information or for us to resend an invoice. Now they can open the portal and it’s self service. They can track payments and see sales orders. It takes time off of us and makes it easier for the customer to order from us,” said Schindler.
Immediate ROI
The Baden team saw immediate ROI in multiple areas, but one of the most impactful was the reduction of credit card fees. They were able to reduce fees by nearly 1%, providing significant savings. And with the improved system, they added a convenience fee to cover those expenses.
“We couldn’t justify adding a convenience fee before but now we can because the system actually is convenient. It’s easy and it works right. iSolutions easily paid for itself multiple times in one month,” said Schindler. “We have also had customers switching to ACH to avoid the convenience fee and that makes payments easier for us as well.”
At Baden, now the AR team can focus on collecting money and has been able to reduce or eliminate the time spent troubleshooting or trying to figure out how to collect on past due accounts. They rely on a module from iSolutions to provide instant information on past due accounts and easily send automatic email reminders to those customers.
The customer service team is able to provide better customer service. Before the turn around time to enter orders or get information to customers was two to three days. Now with information directly at their fingertips, the team can handle requests faster and provide better service.
“It hurts our ability to grow sales if we’re slow to react to customer demand. Now it’s easier for the customer to order from us. With the direct real time integration to BC, we can see payments immediately with no lag time. It makes everything so much easier,” said Schindler.
Key Benefits
- Nearly 1% reduction in credit card processing fees
- Elimination of manual steps to process payments, resulting in at least 3 hours saved per day
- Ability to release deposited funds in seconds rather than hours
- Ability to add a convenience fee to online credit card payments
- Reduction in time required to respond to customer requests
- Direct integration to Business Central for a seamless experience
