Company: Deutsche Post DHL (DHL CSI), Bonn, Germany
Company Description: Deutsche Post DHL is the world’s leading mail and logistics services group. The Deutsche Post and DHL corporate brands represent a one-of-a-kind portfolio of logistics (DHL) and communications (Deutsche Post) services. Around 480,000 employees in more than 220 countries and territories form a global network focused on service, quality and sustainability.
Nomination Category: Sales Awards Achievement Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Best Use of Technology in Sales

Nomination Title: DHL CSI's implementation of a robust and flexible new business technology platform

Tell the story about how your organization used technology to improve sales operations, drive sales growth, and/or improve customer satisfaction since the beginning of July 2013 (up to 650 words). Focus on specific accomplishments, and relate these accomplishments to past performance or industry norms. Be sure to mention obstacles overcome, innovations or discoveries made, and outcomes:

DHL was the first in the logistics industry to implement a global key account management program in 2004, DHL Customer Solutions and Innovation (DHL CSI). Today the DHL CSI team simplifies the customer experience by providing a single customer interface, delivering cross-Deutsche Post DHL (DPDHL) coordination, and developing innovative industry-tailored solutions for top customers.

1) Objectives & Requirements

A key role for DHL CSI is to support the growth ambitions of the DPDHL Group and the DHL business divisions. To do this, the team implemented a robust new business technology platform to:

• Minimize the data entry and administrative efforts of DHL CSI Global Customer Managers, allowing them to focus on their core tasks

• Maximize DHL CSI’s discovery and sharing of relevant customer issues and insights with sales teams in all regions and divisions

This platform had to be:

• Robust enough to host the full account management process landscape

• Flexible enough to accommodate complexities between DHL CSI, the divisions, and regions, and adapt to a dynamic business environment

• Sophisticated enough to ensure data consistency across processes and hierarchies – only if the same data was referenced and used across the entire organization (regardless of region, sector, division, hierarchy level, or account management process) would DHL CSI be able to align account management activities and maximize resource efficiency

2) Implementation

The new business technology platform was based on:

• The salesforce.com-based CRM system (ACE) to serve as a one-stop platform for DHL CSI Global Customer Managers and sales leaders. It hosts all account management processes, allowing easy information sharing and collaboration between the DHL business divisions and DHL CSI.

• MSBI (Microsoft Business Intelligence) – to complement ACE, this suite was selected to provide comprehensive customized reports and in-depth datasets and put everything at the fingertips of each customer manager. All reports and data sets maintained in MSBI can be accessed via ACE.

Technology enabled significant improvements for our key processes (e.g. customer development plan, pipeline, performance dialogue):

• Interfaces were established with divisional CRM systems for pipeline and other data exchange in both directions.

• To minimize administrative effort, data entry requirements were mapped and streamlined ensuring that once data is entered for one process, other processes can use it without re-entering information.

• DHL CSI set up dynamic dashboards and reports for a consistent and up-to-date view of key performance metrics and customer issues.

• DHL CSI developed a customer scorecard concept (providing a holistic view of account performance) and enabled easy access to the latest underlying financial and pipeline development data. All data sets can be accessed via a single page in ACE.

The scale of business technology improvements required a significant change management effort to roll out across the organization. The team provided comprehensive communication, extensive technical process training, best practice sharing for all users, and a hyper-care support phase immediately after rollout.

3) Impact of these technology changes

High levels of user satisfaction and adoption were reported after platform rollout. In just one year, customer information is now more efficiently accessed and shared, account management teams are better at time allocation and focus, and there have been measurable improvements in the contacts database (doubled in size), pipeline robustness (outdated opportunities down to 6% from 37%), and sales performance (net gains doubled; average gain size up by 26%).

Because of these positive results, there is ongoing management support for platform expansion. Several additional ACE-supported processes have been added to the roadmap, and DHL CSI plans migrating more functions to the platform. ACE is now well on its way to becoming – as intended – a true one-stop platform for all account management activities.

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