ChangeGroup – a provider of foreign currency and tourist services in 11 countries across Europe, Asia-Pacific and North America – has commenced rolling out IMX Software’s next-generation GTS Retail system to boost transaction throughput and centralise the management of its operations worldwide.

The UK-headquartered group will replace the first-generation IMX retail forex point of sale solution it has used to drive its business for the past decade with a Software–as-a-Service (SaaS) deployment of GTS Retail at all branches by June 2014. The platform will drive operations at around 80 ChangeGroup branches in some of the world’s prime tourist and business locations.

Among the benefits ChangeGroup expects to achieve from the solution are enhanced transaction performance, lower operating costs, simpler regulatory compliance, centralised reporting and improved agility.  The system will help the company meet the requirements of international know your customer (KYC), anti-money laundering (AML) laws and regulations, and central bank regulations in the countries where it operates.

Says Paul Meehan, Operations Director at ChangeGroup: “We wanted to put in place a new solution that would centralise the complex reporting and administration of our global network in a single system. But we also needed a SaaS solution that would be flexible enough to cater for localised marketing as well as compliance obligations across multiple jurisdictions.  IMX Software’s solution meets of all these needs, providing us with a platform that will give us a competitive advantage into the future.”

Other advantages of the IMX solution include its ease of use – which simplifies end-user training and change management; its robust, highly configurable reporting tools; and its revenue generating functions such as product upsell and buy-back guarantee”, adds Meehan. Integration of the platform with global sanctions lists (such as those from OFAC, Bank of England, EU and the UN) simplifies transaction-level KYC checks, while the ability to upload scanned documents into client KYC profiles reduces transaction times for repeat customers.

GTS Retail’s Business Continuity Mode (BCM) was another draw card for ChangeGroup. BCM is an on-offline capability that ensures tellers in high transaction volume branches can keep working through a network failure. This safeguards reputation and revenues at branch level in an environment where organisations can suffer heavy losses after just few minutes of downtime during peak trading hours.

Adds Bill Tickner, Managing Director at IMX Software: “In an environment where they face more regulatory pressure and tighter margins than ever before, it is imperative that retail foreign exchange dealers put robust and cost-effective SaaS platforms in place to automate and streamline their point-of-sale operations. We look forward to helping ChangeGroup exploit our new platform to enhance its brand and customer service while meeting the requirements of the regulators in multiple markets.”