Seeing a better way

Last updated: 18 August 2022
grandvision

With more than 7,200 stores in more than 40 countries, GrandVision is one of the largest retailers in the optical world. Pearle, Eye Wish, Charlie Temple, and Zonnebrillen.com areexamples of well-known brands that fall under the GrandVision umbrella.

Customers can go to GrandVision to buy eyewear products such as glasses, sunglasses, and contact lenses. The company also offers a number of products and services in subscription form but knew that their existing platform wasn’t going to keep up with their global operation so they called in Subscription Factory and rb2 to help.

The Challenge

GrandVision’s existing subscription platform was outdated and different systems were used in different countries. The goal was therefore to build a new, uniform, and modern subscription platform that, in the long term, can be used worldwide.

The Answer

The new platform for subscriptions had to have the functionality of a complete customer care system so that employees can help customers properly and in a targeted manner but also On a compact customer portal where users can find information about their subscription services.

The Result

On the new GrandVision subscription platform, service employees can easily help customers create and change subscriptions and process address changes. Customers can quickly and easily view invoices and make payments via the customer portal.

Updates Needed

With more than 7,200 stores in more than 40 countries, GrandVision is one of the largest retailers in the world of eyewear. Pearle, Eye Wish, Charlie Temple, and Zonnebrillen.com are

just a few well-known brands that form the Grandvision group of companies.

As an international provider of glasses and lenses, GrandVision has also focused on growing its online presence, using various digital channels to better serve customers. Customers can go to GrandVision to buy glasses, sunglasses, and contact lenses online, and also a number of their products and services are available in the form of a subscription.

Knowing how important online success is for consumer goods, GrandVision wanted to modernize its existing subscription platform so that it would better serve its people, process, and customers. 

GrandVision’s existing subscription platform was outdated, poorly connected with our parts of its IT footprint and different systems were used in different countries. This lack of consistency made understanding overall brand success between countries very challenging. To get things started, GrandVision wanted to focus on growing a new subscription platform in Sweden, Denmark, and Italy.

Bringing It Together

Together with partner Subscription Factory, rb2 built the new subscription platform for GrandVision. The focus was on the rapid delivery of a finished product to a small group of users. Entirely in line with rb2’s method: start small and then be able to roll out broadly quickly and effectively. 

These two systems had to be linked with the Zuora subscription engine, the GrandVision accounting programs, and the systems to support the audit trail (logging the actions of service employees). Both the portal for customers and employees are linked to the Zuora subscription engine and backend systems such as GrandVision’s applications for payments and accounting. These integrations run through Core Connect, rb2’s integration layer solution.

After a year of development, there was a complete product that GrandVision’s customers could start using. The first group of users of the new subscription platform was 80,000 new customers from across 50 stores in Sweden and Denmark.

A Vision Made Real

On the new GrandVision subscription platform, service employees can easily help customers create and change subscriptions and process address changes. Customers can quickly and easily view invoices and make payments via the customer portal removing the need for input from GrandVision employees.

Service employees can monitor customers in the customer care portal, view the payment status of invoices, and send reminders from the system to ensure that payments are made on time.

After the first user experiences in Sweden and Denmark, GrandVision’s subscription platform will gradually be rolled out to more stores, other countries, and multiple products. Ultimately, accounts of old subscription customers who already had subscriptions before the new platform went live will also be migrated.