Elavon processes an amazing seven million monthly transactions for the Swedish multinational retailer IKEA, covering in-store, ecommerce and remote sales, as well as software point-of-sale terminals. But the relationship is so much more than that.
Ingka Group is IKEA’s parent company, franchising 482 IKEA stores across 31 markets – and counting. Each year, some 657 million people visit these stores, with more than 3.8 billion visits to IKEA.com.
“We strive to make sure IKEA customers can pay [for their goods] with the payment product they want to pay with, and feel safe and secure that their payment is being protected,” explains Sam Langsford, Ingka Group’s inbound payments specialist for IKEA.
Within this global framework, Elavon and IKEA go back a long way – starting in Belgium in 2012. The relationship has grown into 11 markets since then, as has the range of payment options for shoppers. “It’s not just store and ecommerce: it’s also remote sales and software point-of-sale terminals,” says Sam. “Elavon’s been with us on that journey.”
More than just payments
Tracking orders around these countries, and indeed around the world, must surely be mind-boggling. That’s where Elavon comes in. To help the retailer make better business decisions, Elavon supplies real-time payments data for every store and country where it works with IKEA.
“One of the great things about having a key relationship with a global partner like Elavon is the transferability of their core services to every facet of our operation,” says Sam. “So, if the customer’s presenting a card at a terminal in the checkout area, that’s the same as the customer writing in their card details on the website. It goes into the same channel of information.”
Elavon operates the same platform across the 11 markets where it works with IKEA. This is important to the retailer: the ability to pull data and run its operations in a consistent way, wherever the store or customer is located. The fact that Elavon is such a strong partner in the payments space means not only can it deliver what IKEA needs when it comes to payments reporting and analytics, but it can bring ideas to IKEA as well.
“One of the things we’ve been able to deliver together with Elavon is what we call a ‘data foundation’ of payments: a wealth of almost real-time data on our payments for every store and country we’re operating in, telling us more than we used to know about our payments, our customers and a lot more that we can take to the business, to help make better decisions,” Sam explains.
“For example: we’re able to see what kind of customers are using a corporate card, but not actually presenting themselves as a business customer. That’s really valuable information for us as a business, because we can target that type of customer a bit better. We didn’t have that information before.”
Shared values
This might sound like cold number-crunching, but the relationship between Elavon and IKEA is much deeper than spreadsheet columns could ever indicate. IKEA started as a tiny mail-order company in rural Sweden. But even now, as a global home-furnishing brand that brings affordability, design and comfort to people all over the world, its vision remains the same: to create ‘a better everyday life for the many people’.
“Elavon embodies quite a number of the IKEA values. The principal one I’d point to is ‘togetherness’ – or ‘tillsammans’ in Swedish,” Sam explains. “I can pick up the phone or send an email to our key relationship manager and feel like my question is going to be answered in a very simple way, quite quickly.
“Our relationship feels like it’s an internal one. We have that depth of understanding so, for me, that sets Elavon apart from others.” In fact, Sam sums up his working relationship with Elavon in one word: “Easy.”
“The fact that we can manage such a huge responsibility area has only been possible because we’ve had such key payment relationships as we do with Elavon. If we look to a new market, Elavon are the first ones we look to,” Sam concludes.
