.png)
Industry: Automotive
Function: Global Marketing Services
Goal: To improve the Customer Experience and Optimise the Value Chain
How we helped a global automotive brand improve its customer experience, revaluate its global fulfilment and distribution strategy and identify cost saving opportunities.
The Challenge
Our client manages a multi-million dollar, revenue-generating premier marketing programme in support of sales of its premium brand. One of the customer benefits of the marketing programme across all geographies is a ‘member kit’ of branded collateral and regular high perceived value communications delivered primarily by post. Member global package fulfilment and delivery requires a complex and fragmented operational model, with vendors and delivery channels dependent on geography.
Waiting for delivery, many members were experiencing significant delays in receiving their membership kits and collateral whilst some members were not receiving any collateral at all. Country Managers and Marketing Operations across regions were anxious and concerned that these kit delivery issues were damaging the member experience and impacting the brand. They were also concerned that the delays and failures were resulting in additional costs for handling Member complaints, repeat enquiries and replacement fulfilment and mail deliveries.
The Global Strategy Team began to recognise issues in the management of the marketing programme across regions and wanted to eliminate waste and leverage cost savings to create a world class delivery experience. In addition to fulfilment issues, serious concerns regarding current mailing methods and mailing legislation were being raised with specific regions such as Latin America and Asia Pacific. The management team wanted to understand what constraints and risks were in existence across regions and how to work within these constraints so that the Member experience would not be adversely affected. The challenge, however, was also to minimise cost wherever possible.
Evaluating the Customer Service, Order Management and Logistics Chain;
In order to understand the current challenges and identify the root cause of the issues, Envisago worked with the management team in the US to scope the project. The initial scope would address the US, EMEA and LATAM customer service, fulfilment and distribution with Asia Pac and Japan coming on board later.
Envisago first conducted site audits of the client’s EMEA and US Contact Centre and Fulfilment Operations (which also served the LATAM market). Interviews were conducted with client and key vendor staff, process and performance data across regions and vendors was gathered, reviewed and analysed. The logistics network was also evaluated in light of international mailing standards, regulatory frameworks and performance visibility.
Linking the Chain
Having spent time in the global operation, it was clear that management structures, processes and performance measures were significantly below par in driving consistent levels of performance through the service, fulfilment and distribution chain. Incumbent vendors, many with contracts spanning a number of years, were not managed for high performance and displayed a lack of innovation in providing their solutions. Protocols and standards varied significantly across regions making it extremely difficult for the global management team to compare like for like in driving service or cost optimisation. There was a poor use of data and the quality of data from legacy systems provided a significant challenge. We saw that a lack of vision and leadership of the marketing programme from the operational perspective was adding unnecessary cost and comprising the customer experience.
Envisago Consulting identified gaps in each function of the membership operations infrastructure including contact centre, order fulfilment, logistics, overall data management, vendor and contract management. Service enhancement opportunities were identified together with cost saving opportunities in the region of $1,000,000 or more. Due to the many and varied complexities and challenges, recommendations were prioritised for each function and these recommendations were translated into a roadmap for change.
Client Testimonial
“What we value most about working with Envisago Consulting is their honesty, enthusiasm and passion for what they do. Envisago doesn’t operate in a ‘stuffy’, ‘corporate’ way; they work with flair and honesty, with a tremendous amount of knowledge and experience thrown in too”