Henry Howard Finance has beaten off tough competition to secure itself a place as a finalist in the Best Use of Technology category of the first-ever Growth Finance Awards.
[aoa id=”1″]
The Growth Finance Awards launched this year in order to celebrate the companies providing “more than finance” to the UK’s growing businesses. It’s the first event of its kind, celebrating the innovative organisations breathing optimism into all regions of the UK by helping ambitious SMEs to scale new heights. These growth champions provide the vital capital inflows – around £79.7 billion last year – that help thousands of businesses to scale-up, boost productivity and create new jobs up and down the country.
The Best use of Technology award highlights the growth finance providers who have optimised their products and improved their offering through the innovative use of technology.
[/aoa]
Over the last 12 months HHF has been busy creating a new version of its online leasing application, HowApp, and through a £1million plus investment our technology, are proud of its ground-breaking capabilities which will lead the way when it comes to technology in finance as a result.
Anne Williams, Chief Operating Officer at Henry Howard Finance, says:
“Technology now lies at the forefront of everything we do here at Henry Howard Finance, making it easier and more efficient for our customers to do business. We provide first-class asset finance origination capability, portfolio management, analytics and risk management, all of which is underpinned with a robust and secure infrastructure.
“Behind the scenes, more than 10% of our employees now sit within our IT and Technology department in order to make this happen, working alongside a team of business analysts to ensure we are working with real-time data and that all our integral systems are automated.
“During 2017 we set out to build a robust, reliable technology infrastructure designed to support our ambitious growth plans and, which I’m pleased to say, we successfully completed. As ever, HHF customers have been integral to the decisions we have made within that time through the form of customer engagement surveys and focus groups, as well as the commissioning of independent research.
“From this we are aware that a high percentage of our new customer base is with us because of our technical ability to support our customers. In addition to investing into our new version of HowApp, some of the ways we do this includes:
“Key Data Services – As part of our technology upgrades, we are now fully integrated into key data services providing commercial and consumer credit data, bureau agnostic, pricing calculations and amortisation profiles and other elements too.
“Internal Applications – Over the last 12 months we have also integrated and updated most of our internal facing applications, cutting out waiting times and wastage to improve our processes and customer experience.
“Business Intelligence – We have created comprehensive data warehouse, and we are continually exploring and introducing the latest technologies and concepts into the business.
“Infrastructure – We have created and unified our hybrid cloud infrastructure platform, harnessing the power and flexibility of the cloud where practical.
“Throughout all of our technology developments however, it is people who remain at the heart of our decisions. Our customer experience is first class, our staff get the support that they need, our partners save time due to automated systems – and our funders like what we are about and are supporting us.
“The use and importance of technology and our customer service excellence underpin all of our growth capabilities here at Henry Howard Finance, which continue to be as successful as they are ambitious. We wish good luck to the other shortlisted companies for this award and we look forward to the ceremony on Wednesday 11 September at the Royal Lancaster Hotel, London’’.
