Lightfoot Statistics
- Founded 2013
- Based in Devon, UK
- British developed and manufactured software/hardware
- Telematics, driver performance and driver engagement specialists using gamification technology to deliver fleet management solutions
- Impact of one vehicle fitted with Lightfoot equates to taking 7 standard vehicles off the road, in terms of Nox reduction*
*Independent study into Lightfoot technology by Bath University
Value added by Performa IT
- Engaged in 2019
- Health check, requirements scoping, delivery and training
- Digital transformation, integration and customisation of sales processes, CRM/account management, and Service Cloud
- Reporting and monitoring dashboards
Lightfoot’s Background
UK green technology company Lightfoot provides commercial fleets with a unique in-vehicle device that monitors driver behaviour and flags when aggressive and inefficient driving increases emissions, and lowers fuel efficiency, vehicle performance and safety.
This innovative technology was developed when Lightfoot’s engineering division discovered that its diesel-hybrid Transit vans, proven in tests to achieve a 15% fuel saving, failed to deliver these savings in the real world.
Drivers were using the hybrid system like the performance-boosting KERS set-up in Formula One, rather than to aid efficiency. The experience showed that, no matter how efficient the vehicle, if driven inefficiently, it’ll be inefficient.
That brought about the realisation that the key to efficiency lay in helping drivers to adopt better, smoother driving habits.
The result was Lightfoot, the only fleet management solution that engages directly with the driver in real time, incentivising performance improvements right from the driver’s seat.
Role of Salesforce
Lightfoot began their Salesforce journey in 2018, working with an implementation partner to deliver a standard environment and maximise visibility across their sales pipeline.
Unfortunately, some critical integrations didn’t work properly, risking the organisation’s confidence in the system.
Having appealed to Salesforce, Lightfoot was then referred to Performa-IT.
Here, Client Services Director Ben Bax describes Lightfoot’s experience of working with Performa-IT to salvage the reputation of their Salesforce platform and begin to drive the value they needed from it.
Lightfoot’s Challenge: inconsistent processes, unreliable data and inadequate probability forecasting
“While Salesforce was being used within the company, every team had their own way of working with it,” explains Ben.
“As we were growing at a rapid rate, the inconsistency of processes across the business and within Salesforce had the potential to get very messy.
“Different teams would be using multiple opportunities for the same customer, so it was impossible to determine what the projected sales were for the business.”
In addition, the standard set of probability metrics were not quite right for Lightfoot’s typical sales profile, which further jeopardised system confidence.
Lightfoot’s requirement: putting processes ‘on rails’
As business slowed during the early months of the pandemic in 2020, an opportunity presented itself to carry out a review of the Salesforce environment.
“What we really needed was to standardise all our processes and opportunities so that there was a consistent flow throughout the sales pipeline,” says Ben.
“We wanted to put our processes on rails, with proper validations, checks and tailored probability metrics, so we could build trust in the outputs and make the right decisions.”
Why Performa IT?
Having demonstrated good technical ability and a clear understanding of Lightfoot’s business through their initial Salesforce health-check and integration fixes, Performa-IT were invited to submit a technical design and estimates to address Lightfoot’s requirements.
“To Performa-IT’s credit,” Ben comments, “although their quote was way beyond our budget, they worked closely with us to pare down the scope to include the ‘must-haves’ and leave out the nice-to-haves.
“It was this combination of technical ability, commercial awareness and pragmatic scoping that was very persuasive.”
Performa IT implementation approach
Scoping
“Performa-IT have a great knack of asking the right questions to determine scope, making us think a different way about what we need,” says Ben.
“In hindsight, getting help from a knowledgeable third party to determine the scope of our requirements was good for us.”
Agility
Commenting on Performa-IT’s cultural fit with Lightfoot, Ben says: “The team at Performa is very action oriented. Like us, they want to do the right thing by their clients, so they don’t spend too much time talking without doing.
“There is no needless bureaucracy, and it doesn’t take long to get new functionality up and working.”
Skills transfer
“Performa-IT has been very effective in training our IT resource, ensuring they can pick up and run with elements of the system,” says Ben.
“This helps us become more flexible and agile ourselves, as well as self-sufficient in our Salesforce admin.”
Solutions and Integrations
With Performa-IT’s help Lightfoot has deployed a customised version of Salesforce CRM, Service Cloud for customer support, and dashboard reporting for all levels of the organisation.
However, it is the integration with Lightfoot’s own product which is providing the most transformative piece in account management and customer relationship building.
“Performa-IT have picked up driver performance and fleet score data out of the Lightfoot platform and included it within the account managers’ customer information dashboards.
“It provides very powerful insights and opportunities.”
Benefits of Performa IT’s implementations
Ben is glowing in his praise for Performa-IT’s assistance and contribution to Lightfoot, saying: “It’s helped us make a tremendous step-change in our sales pipeline visibility, management and decision-making.”
Customer Satisfaction and Confidence
“We now have absolute clarity of our customer journey right from the first prospective conversations, through to going to trial, signing a contract and then on-boarding with us,” says Ben.
“We also have the capability to live and breathe that contract through clear SLAs all the way to renewal.
“Having a single customer journey makes our account teams much more efficient too.”
Coordination and consistency
Explaining how consistency has been bedded in across the teams Ben says: “Every single member of the team has their own homepage within Salesforce which shows them the status of their cases, deals, and meetings.
“We now have uniform processes across all teams, and a much more coordinated and focused way of communicating and managing workflows and staff responsibilities.
“It also spells out at the beginning of each day what each individual’s tasks are and shows how they are doing against team KPIs and business objectives.”
Enhanced confidence at Board and investor level
Ben is clear that Performa-IT have significantly contributed to Board and investor confidence in Lightfoot’s business and growth plans.
“Our SLT meetings now have the Salesforce company dashboard as a central focus and we are inserting salesforce data directly into our board packs,” says Ben.
“The Exec team are using the information within Salesforce to challenge the sales forecasts in a way that was never possible before given the inconsistent way the platform was being used.
“Now, we have much more clarity and certainty in the data.”
Having better clarity of the pipeline is also unlocking Lightfoot’s ability to hit their growth plans and inspire investors.
“This is a big tick in the box for our development,” asserts Ben.
Transformed team management
Commenting on the power of the data-driven insights straight out of Lightfoot’s own platform, Ben says: “This has completely changed how I manage my client-facing teams.
“Performance management is now entirely based on real-time customer ‘health’, which is informed directly by the driver engagement data that we capture in Lightfoot.
“Today, we can address issues much more quickly and target resources and training where we need them most.”
Proactive relationship management
“Having real-time customer engagement information visible prompts account managers to have proactive conversations with their clients wherever engagement has dropped off, or where performance is improving,” says Ben.
“We can make sure our teams are pursuing opportunities to rejuvenate relationships or celebrate good outcomes with our customers. It all helps towards engagement and contract renewals!”
New Possibilities arising for Lightfoot with Salesforce from Performa IT
“There’s more we want to do!” says Ben.
For Lightfoot, bottom line revenue generation lies in tighter forecasting and more customer renewals resulting from confidence in the service they provide.
Client visibility of their service status
“With this in mind one of our next developments will be to give key customers their own window on the status of their cases and tickets via Service Cloud,” says Ben.
“This will build trust in our service and help customers feel confident in our support.”
Enhanced integrations
“We can help clients even more by giving them more immediate insights into their driver behaviour,” says Ben.
“The Salesforce dashboard is a really powerful tool in driving more valuable conversations with our customers.”
Integrating more with Lightfoot’s customer and driver data as well as with the business’s backend databases is where Ben is keen to look next.
Recommendation
“It’s straightforward to get Salesforce up and running, but to get it working in a way that suits the particular business requires a greater degree of thought and expertise,” comments Ben.
“This is why I would not hesitate to recommend Performa-IT’s skills. They are a really good bunch with a good combination of technical and business understanding.”
Performa IT says
“It’s been very rewarding to work with Lightfoot and help them pull their Salesforce solution back from the brink and start generating real value.
“Their solution enables fleet compliance, reduces fleet fuel costs and carbon emissions one driver at a time, and rewards individuals for taking greater responsibility for their behaviour. As a practical and superior alternative to telematics tracker solutions, Lightfoot is the future, both for ICE fleets and for effective electric vehicle fleet management.
“We are excited to support them and congratulate them on their investment-worthy innovation.”
Real results. Real partnership.
Powered by Performa and Salesforce.
