As a global group, Experian powers data-driven opportunities for businesses worldwide. In the UK, Experian works with Yodel, one of the UK’s largest courier companies that delivers parcels to every postcode in the UK. They deliver over 190 million parcels every year, a number that continues to rise as they partner with a growing list of well-known online and highstreet retailers such as MissGuided, FootAsylum, and The Very Group.
Challenge
Yodel has experienced unprecedented growth in demand during the COVID-19 pandemic when the need for contactless delivery became critical.
Ensuring that Yodel can deliver millions of parcels every week is essential. The company has two key objectives:
- Increases profitability
- Increases delivery capacity through sorting centers and last-mile network
To achieve this, Yodel needs to reduce the time taken to deliver parcels, streamline route planning across their delivery network and eliminate any other barriers to successful delivery.
Having valid and complete addresses, combined with precise location insight, was deemed essential to accurately pinpoint delivery and collection points and ensure drivers can easily reach the right front door, first time and every time.
Solution
Yodel is a long-standing partner with Experian, having entrusted us to manage their address data quality for many years. The decision was made to leverage our flagship location dataset to help meet their business objectives and deliver a better customer experience.
The company utilizes Experian’s address validation and cleansing solutions powered by Royal Mail’s UK postal data and Experian’s Location Complete dataset. The solutions enabled Yodel to introduce comprehensive data quality checks and remediations across the various channels where they capture postal addresses.
As part of the process, Yodel relied on Experian’s unparalleled experience of working with large logistics companies that have complex requirements. Experian’s data quality consultants worked closely with the team at Yodel to understand those requirements, project timeframes and deliver a cutting-edge solution that meets their evolving needs.
Results
Since making the changes, Yodel has been able to:
- Increase first-time delivery rates by 5%, which is the equivalent of 300,000 additional parcels reaching their intended destination every year.
- Further streamline its route planning and delivery processes by ensuring reliable addresses with rich location insight are to hand for their delivery drivers.
- Significantly reduce the operational inefficiencies and frustrations that come with inaccurate address data infiltrating its network.
What's next?
Yodel is continuing to work closely with Experian as they work to improve delivery capacity and streamline the customer experience across their touchpoints. With the boom in eCommerce following COVID-19 set to continue, the company is accelerating its digital transformation and incorporated hosted solutions that scale with their business.
.
