New start-up focuses on customer engagement tech opportunity

12 Oct 2009

A new Irish start-up has unveiled a cloud-computing service that helps businesses improve online customer engagement.

Lucey Technology’s oCE (online Customer Engagement) platform ties together the latest unified communications and Web 2.0 functionality for businesses across all industries to interact with their customers.

Functionality includes online payments, instant messaging, video conferencing, VoIP and the sharing of documents, eg, quotes, sales orders, invoices, contracts and legals, architectural/engineering designs, medical and dental records, media files and many more.

Online drive

“For well over a decade, large businesses such as banks and telecoms, have pushed their clients to their websites as a means of pushing down costs and driving efficiencies in their organisations while increasing the service levels to their clients,” explained Ian Lucey, CEO of Lucey Technology.

“Lucey Technology makes all this possible for all businesses, large and small, to interact in a cost-effective way. The branded workspace, Lucey Technology, represents a user’s organisation which is simple and secure.

“A company can upload their logo and invite their clients to log in and interact with them. It integrates with a company’s existing website and becomes an extension of it,” Lucey explained.

The underlying technology is a mixture of in-house custom development and Microsoft’s technology stack, including MS Sharepoint, MSN, Windows Live and MS Dynamics.

The result is Lucey oCE, a state-of-the-art technology at a fraction of the price and a Microsoft architecture that the user is familiar with. Businesses do not need to change their existing systems, as Lucey oCE complements their existing systems.

Striving to improve efficiency

“Efficiency is improved and overheads reduced as routine tasks are brought online, leaving the business to focus on value-add interactions with their customers,” Lucey added.

“The online payment facility means improved cash flow and the offering to the customer is improved because transacting online is more convenient for them, too.”

Businesses can avail of some of these services from €10 a month. Depending on the requirement, users can provide their clients with some of the lowest online-payment rates, accept digital signatures, share 1GB of files and utilise MSN functionality, including 256-bit encryption, VoIP and video calling to interact with their clients.

“All businesses, and especially SMEs, pay too much to process payments online. Businesses have been charged anything from 2-5pc to process payments online,” Lucey said.

“We decided rather than join in with these large fees instead we would attack the problem. Big businesses have a much higher bargaining power and companies, such as airlines, can be charged less than 1pc.

“By utilising the combined bargaining power of our customers Lucey has agreed to a groundbreaking deal to offer all of business the opportunity to process credit-card transactions at only 1.24pc. This is less than half the cost of the main incumbents in the marketplace,” Lucey said.

By John Kennedy

Photo: Ian Lucey, CEO of Lucey Technology.

John Kennedy is a journalist who served as editor of Silicon Republic for 17 years

editorial@siliconrepublic.com