ADVAM reflects on 2014. A positive year of growth for ADVAM
Posted 5 February 2015, Australia
ADVAM looks back over 2014 to discuss new customer projects, partner initiatives and product enhancements.
With the establishment of an international business unit in the UK, the acquisition of Inventive IT, plus the development of new customer and partner relationships, ADVAM focused on the development of new and the growth of existing markets during 2014.
Company expansion and the development of new markets
ADVAM (UK) Ltd was established early in 2014, with the London offices officially opened in August 2014. The establishment of a UK base enables ADVAM to focus on expansion within the UK and Europe and to provide support to existing customers within the region.
In addition, to further cement the company’s growth within Europe, in October 2014 ADVAM (UK) Ltd acquired Inventive IT Ltd. Inventive IT is a UK based company that has established itself as a specialist in travel industry web development, yield management and reservation solutions. By bringing the two companies together, ADVAM is able to combine their industry leading services and expertise to accelerate growth, without losing focus on existing customer service.
ADVAM CEO Jose Da Silva comments on the acquisition, “The acquisition of Inventive IT enables ADVAM to continue its expansion and development of global markets. By combining some of the leading parking and reservation experts in the industry, we can combine our skills and industry leading services to extend our customer reach and to create scale in order to achieve our growth plans. We have only been working together a few months since the acquisition, but we have already seen the benefits of the partnership by collaborating on opportunities and being able to maximise on our combined expertise”.
Expansion into Europe was not the only focus for ADVAM during 2014. Product development to improve existing customer services and the acquisition of new customers also helped ADVAM to increase the number of global transactions in 2014.
Product Development to support customer revenue growth
Product development focused on ADVAM’s industry leading parking reservation solution, which is in place at over 500 car parks across the world. Working in collaboration with clients, ADVAM developed a number of key enhancements to the service. The principle change was to enable clients to provide additional standalone services as part of the shopping cart. For example, an airport can now offer reservation in the executive lounge without the prerequisite for the customer to reserve parking. This enables clients to maximise revenue by opening up a number of alternative revenue streams. In addition to this feature, other enhancements were developed including an update of the reporting package and inclusion of a survey module.
Rick Calo, Senior Operations Manager comments, “It’s important that we continually innovate and develop our service offering ahead of changes in the market. In order to do this and to make sure changes are in line with customer requirements we worked in collaboration with our clients on the next version of the reservation service. This enabled us to not only make sure client requests were incorporated now, but we could ensure long term requirements were integrated with future plans”.
New customer and partner relationships
Due to its bespoke solutions and expert systems integration, ADVAM welcomed new clients from across the globe. To add to ADVAM’s strong client base in Australia, ADVAM integrated with numerous airports across Europe to provide their industry leading parking reservation system. In addition, global clients from the retail, property, Local Government and insurance sectors connected with ADVAM to benefit from PCI and EMV compliant ecommerce and payment solutions.
Dennis Pintamalli, Director of Business Development, ADVAM comments, “We have worked hard to refine our service offerings in the parking and ecommerce markets. In addition to product developments we have added key new personnel to our team and established an office in Sydney, the hub of payments in Australia. This has enabled us to strengthen the service provided to our existing clients and provides the opportunity to work with new clients. This focus will continue into 2015 with some exciting new developments to be launched later in the year”.
With security breaches prevalent in the payments news during 2014, ADVAM continued to be at the forefront of payments compliance. ADVAM once again secured PCI Compliance accreditation and was awarded EMV certifications with Commonwealth Bank Australia and Macquarie Bank. ADVAM continues to push forward to ensure they can provide a secure, compliant platform to their customers and have already commenced certification with a third major Australian Bank, to be completed in early 2015.
Paul Sidwell, Channel Partner Director for ADVAM comments, “It’s important that we can continue to expand our partner networks so that we’re able to serve our growing customer base across the globe. During 2014, the focus was to not only strengthen existing relationships, but to create new partnership opportunities that support our drive to provide industry leading, compliant solutions. Not only have we focused on PCI compliance and EMV certification, but we continually work with new organisations to deliver innovative solutions to our customers.”
Managing sustainable growth to maintain exceptional customer service
To support the growth plans for 2014 and beyond, it’s imperative that existing customers continue to receive the same high level of customer service and to ensure processes are in place to sustain growth and product developments. In order to achieve this, ADVAM proactively recruited new team members with specialist experience across a range of disciplines including Sales, Marketing, Project Management, eCommerce, Business Improvement, Operations and Support. The growth in the international team provides the resource and level of expertise to support ADVAM’s continued growth and maintain their specialist customer service.
Jose Da Silva, CEO of ADVAM concludes, “2014 has been an exceptional year for ADVAM, but it does not mean we can now sit back, 2015 is already looking to be just as big. When you reflect over the year it is remarkable what we have achieved. Our focus remains on delivering industry leading parking, payment and ecommerce services to our clients and to continue the innovation and level of customer service that they expect from us. The achievements we have made couldn’t have been done without the dedication of the whole team, but also the great customers and partners that we work with. Our customers’ passion, drive to continually improve and to be leaders in their own fields is inspiring and the fact we can collaborate so well together drives the innovation and dedication of our team”.
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About ADVAM (www.advam.com)
ADVAM is the leading global provider of payment solutions, providing a full suite of parking, reservation and ecommerce payment solutions.
Managed on its own proprietary payment gateway, ADVAM solutions are PCI Level 1 and EMV compliant, removing the burden of legislative risk from customers. In addition, ADVAM’s transaction network handles dedicated links with acquirer banks in over 19 countries, offering the power of multicurrency acquiring and instant access to global markets.
