THE CHALLENGE

After the first lockdown, the federal government launched the consumer cheque, a new initiative that offers businesses a parafiscal benefit to reward their workforce for their efforts during such challenging times. Businesses could place their orders via a certified distributor (Sodexo, Monizze or Edenred) as well as via the local catering industry or local council, but in these instances the consumer cheques would come in the shape of gift vouchers.

The City of Roeselare, together with vzw Shopping & Centrum Roeselare, truly loved this initiative. Despite some negative advice by governmental bodies because of the complexity of the matter, Roeselare decided to take swift action to ensure the investments made by the local businesses in their workforce would also yield returns for the local trade specifically – since consumer cheques issued by Sodexo, Monizze or Edenred can be used all over Belgium. This triggered the idea of transforming the consumer cheque into a variant of their already existing local gift voucher, which has been circulating for years and can be used to pay at more than 200 local shopkeepers: the #VANRSL consumer voucher.

OUR SOLUTION

The City of Roeselare first addressed the local entrepreneurs to enthuse them to exchange the consumer cheques as much as possible for the #VANRSL consumer voucher, that way supporting the 200 local shops enrolled in the scheme.

Since a consumer cheque has to comply with several strict conditions, the City of Roeselare appointed an accountancy and audit specialist who were tasked with screening the shops that would receive the cheques and what exactly had to be the particular T&C’s mentioned on the voucher itself.

To print and distribute the vouchers fraud proof and in a correct way, the City of Roeselare and vzw Shopping & Centrum Roeselare again came to us, since with the current Roeselare Kadobon, we already managed a similar project for them successfully.

The most important challenge in this project was the fact of having to distribute customised packages: each business had to receive a specific number of envelopes. Per employee, a personalised envelope was required, containing the cheques made out to their very name. The cheques had a rather small standard value, which resulted in some envelopes containing up to 30 cheques. The odds of human error with such complex task are rather big, hence why we opted for automated processing – which in turn required specific features of the material used to print the coupon on. We opted for sustainable cardboard that allowed all necessary safety marks to reduce the risk of fakes being printed.

A unique QR code was printed on each consumer voucher. In the back-office, we generated codes and linked these directly to the respective business, envelope and employee. Some businesses even requested to post the envelopes directly to the addressees’ home.

The project went really well and without any hitches, meaning we succeeded in launching a flawless campaign for the City of Roeselare and vzw Shopping & Centrum Roeselare.

In the end, the local shopkeepers of Roeselare reaped the benefits: over 1,300 employees of 135 businesses received vouchers to the value of over 210,000 EUR in total, to be spent at one of the 200 participating traders in Roeselare.