A software product and digital strategy for a 325-year-old business

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CPJ Field has been providing funeral services for more than three centuries. Still owned and managed by the Field family, the modern company operates from more than 30 locations across South East England.

PROJECT BACKGROUND

In 2015, CPJ Field recognised that its ageing legacy software and unresponsive vendor were increasingly out of step with its ambitions as a business. In a world where technology is fundamental, and where to remain relevant, even the oldest organisation must move with the times, the company wanted to add the flexibility to capture client data on iPads directly while arranging a funeral.

PROJECT BRIEF

Red River was initially engaged to evaluate third party solutions to this comparatively narrow requirement, but it quickly became apparent that integrating the new function with the existing system represented poor value. Red River conducted a scoping exercise, which revealed that it could develop a new core business system with expanded and modernised functionality for little more than half the cost of the off-the-shelf solution.

KEY HIGHLIGHTS

Red River developed a complete new funeral arrangement system fit for a modern, digital business. Cloud hosted and built on scalable web technologies, Arranger was designed from the ground up to be productised and licensed to other funeral directors. In addition, Red River built an entirely new web portal through which CPJ Field’s clients could make payments or manage obituary and committal service information, while mourners could leave online condolences.

RESULTS

CPJ Field now runs its venerable business on a modern and flexible software system, built for the digital age and providing a frictionless, optimised and consistent experience. No longer dependent on a software vendor that doesn’t have its business interests at heart, CPJ Field has in Red River an agile and responsive partner for its digital ambitions, allowing it to focus on remaining as relevant today as it was in 1690.

Red River are an excellent company, blending bare-knuckle tech prowess, knowledge, and skill with plain English communication. I am now a huge fan of the Agile/sprint approach, of which I was initially sceptical.
Charlie Field, Managing Director, C.P.J. Field & Co. Ltd

The Arranger project was well managed throughout; they dealt with adversity pre-empting changes that would need to be made to keep the project on track and it was delivered on time and in budget.
Charlie Field, Managing Director, C.P.J. Field & Co. Ltd

They are certainly not ‘just’ consultants, they are problem solvers; technical wizards with people at the heart of what they do. A rare mix.
Charlie Field, Managing Director, C.P.J. Field & Co. Ltd

PROJECT TECH DECISIONS

As a fully objective, unbiased consultancy team we firmly believe that the technology should follow the need, not the other way around. We make our decisions based on the most appropriate technologies available at the time. Here's what we used on this project:

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