DPD UK Statistics
- £2.2bn turnover business
- 22 000 employees
- 50 000 calls per day
- Designated the UK’s favourite parcel company since 2013 by moneysavingexpert.com
- Serving major High Street and online brands with B2B and B2C parcel delivery
Value added by Performa IT
- Engaged in 2016
- Business Process Analysis and redesign
- On-going Salesforce advice, development, app integration, maintenance and support
- Planned project delivery – 4 in 2021 rising to 6 in 2022
DPD UK’s Background with Salesforce
Beginning the story of DPD UK’s Salesforce journey, Head of Salesforce for the award-winning parcel company Adam Hooper says:
“DPD UK first implemented Salesforce in 2010, before my time with the company. It was originally brought in to run the sales process, but it wasn’t fully adopted or championed at a senior level.
“By 2014 the organisation was using Salesforce to manage telephone inquiries in the call centres, but still it wasn’t really fulfilling the true potential of the platform.
“Our incumbent Salesforce implementation partner was a large organisation that was proving poor value for money – and this wasn’t doing the platform any favours in the executive suite.”
DPD UK’s Challenge: maximising ROI from the Salesforce platform
“The scope of functionality in Salesforce is huge and it can be daunting knowing where to begin.
“The system didn’t have too many fans at first, and this was affecting how it was being deployed and used,” explains Adam.
“We had a lot of business processes that weren’t that efficient and a heavy reliance on spreadsheets across most departments. As a result there was a lack of data readily available to help the business be proactive and identify trends and opportunities.
“Our incumbent Salesforce advisers were adding to the problem in some ways because there was a high turnover of consultants. We were never dealing with the same people so this introduced quite a lot of delay.”
DPD UK’s requirement: strategic positioning to drive business value
“Given the level of investment, improving the ROI was clearly important,” states Adam.
“Strategically we want the Salesforce platform to be doing all the heavy-lifting in terms of enterprise processes, so staff can just come in to work and have everything they need to do their job available in front of them.”
“We needed to eliminate horrible spreadsheets and make our internal processes smarter and faster.
“As Head of Salesforce I’m often coming up with new ideas that I want to try out on the platform, so I needed an implementation partner that was as enthusiastic as I was to put Salesforce at the heart of our enterprise.”
Why Performa IT?
Performa IT turned out to be that enthusiastic partner!
Commenting on the benefits of working with a small Salesforce implementation provider over some of the larger consultancies, Adam says: “Since they came on-board in 2016 Performa IT have become our trusted Salesforce advisers.
“Unlike the bigger firms with Performa IT we get the same person every day. They know our system inside out and are like family!
“There are fewer overheads involved with a smaller implementation partner – so every interaction has greater potential to add value. I don’t need an engagement manager, I just need a knowledgeable development expert to understand what I want to achieve and then deliver it!”
Performa IT implementation approach
“Performa IT are a team that eat, sleep and breathe Salesforce development. They love the challenge of trying out new ideas, and often turn requests around within a couple of days,” says Adam.
“As we are such a large client for Performa IT we have access to our own dedicated development team. They work fast and in a very agile way.
“We have shared visibility of all project management information over a common platform that massively improves communication and resource reporting. We work as one team, and they give us the sense that they are 100% focused on our success.
“The other great thing about the working relationship we have with Performa IT is the fact that they can help us plug gaps in skills and resources. They have such a grasp of the platform that they can support us throughout the lifecycle from process analysis to overall architecture design and implementation.”
Solutions
Describing the scope of work Performa IT have delivered for DPD UK Adam sums it up in one word: “Enormous!”
“I have about seven sides of A4 listing out all the functionality and processes Salesforce now covers, much of which has been implemented by Performa IT.
“We’ve gone from limited usage to now having a Salesforce presence across 36 departments within our business.”
Here are some of the solutions Performa IT have introduced for DPD UK:
Docusign
“This was one of the early ad hoc pieces of work that Performa IT worked on. It’s a simple but amazingly effective integration, enabling documents to be verified and held within the system,” Adam explains.
Sales processes
“Performa IT’s business analysts helped us reconfigure our processes to make them smoother and more efficient with the platform,” says Adam.
“This was a key piece of work to engage the business and encourage greater adoption than had been achieved previously.”
Call centre
“Our Salesforce Call Centre implementation that Performa IT helped design and specify is one that we’re particularly proud of,” Adam comments.
“In fact it’s become a bit of a beacon for Salesforce. They send big corporate clients to us to showcase what we’ve done.
“Even though I say it myself I think it’s the best example of a Salesforce call centre in the world at the moment.”
Insurance
“With a huge fleet of vans to manage, DPD UK’s insurance department is busy, but this is one area where we’ve made huge improvements by moving away from spreadsheets and onto Salesforce,” Adam explains.
“We saved £40 000 in the first year alone.
“Performa IT have helped us to integrate the system with our insurance partner Aviva making claims so much more streamlined.”
Innovative app integration
As well as helping DPD UK integrate their custom developed consumer app Your DPD into Salesforce, Performa IT linked DPD UK’s platform with another app that isn’t in the official Salesforce canon.
Adam says: “I was curious to know if we could make Salesforce talk to Whatsapp.
“Performa IT proved it can! Although there is already an app integration for Whatsapp and Salesforce we wanted it to be uniquely branded to DPD UK.
“So Performa IT built us a brand-new integration from the bottom up so that all our communication links with our customers are not only easy but also carry our branding too.”
Benefits of Performa IT’s implementations
There is no shadow of doubt in Adam’s mind that Performa IT have played a significant role in moving DPD UK along their chosen strategic technology path.
“The two pillars of our enterprise systems going forward are Google and Salesforce,” he says.
“Salesforce is now one of four big platforms in our business including parcels, analytics and telephony. It is gradually becoming our enterprise system of choice.”
Increased proactivity and opportunity
“The availability of more data from reengineered and automated business processes means that we can perform better forecasts and identify trends sooner,” says Adam.
“This has a positive impact from customer contact – such as resolving issues and complaints – all the way up to business development.
“We missed a trick in 2015 when our competitors merged their businesses and temporarily suspended deliveries to Ireland.
“But now we have adapted our processes and data capture procedures to ensure we keep track of emerging opportunities in the market.”
Six figure call centre savings
“Having readier access to information on the call centre screens, as well as slicker processes and interfaces that are more aligned with what our call centre staff need, means that we shaved 45 seconds off the average telephone interaction.
“With calls typically costing £2.82 for 4.5 minutes, this adds up to a significant saving, but also means that our staff can deal with more calls each day too.”
Reporting efficiencies and cohesion
“The Sales Director doesn’t bother pulling reports now in her presentations to the Board,” comments Adam.
“Instead she just brings up the Salesforce dashboard and all the information is there in real-time.
“Knowing that the data is visible throughout the organisation has boosted adoption by all departments. This strengthens the DPD UK cause – and gives everyone the sense of pulling together in one team.”
New Possibilities arising for DPD UK
“The more people use the platform the more they want to use it and add functionality,” says Adam.
“I foresee we’ll be planning up to 6 major projects in 2022. Performa IT grow with our demand.
Billing automation
“Currently in the pipeline is a finance project to transform our credit and billing system and processes,” says Adam.
Asset Management
“The development team have recently put together an asset management system using bar codes and QR codes that mean we can track assets and devices across the organisation,” adds Adam.
“It’s mind-blowing!”
Recommendation
“Performa IT is made up of the exact calibre of people I would want to recruit,” says Adam.
“They are smart people who make things happen and I’m constantly recommending them!”
Performa IT says
“We love working with DPD UK!
“They have been the catalyst for our growth and helped us motivate brilliantly skilled developers who really know their stuff and are passionate about our clients’ success.
“We are thrilled that DPD UK are finally maximising the potential of Salesforce – and demonstrating that with proper implementation it really does perform well as a whole-of-enterprise platform for very large organisations.”