Digital Transformation

Simple, accessible and digital logistics

Develop an operating model for Hellmann's digital unit

Our joint success story is based on Hellmann's existing digital infrastructure — specifically: the Digital Customer Experience Department (DCE). As a digital unit, the department pursues the goal of advancing digitization to customers and continuing to promote and prioritize it as a completely independent core competence in the company. Etribes was brought in to take the digital unit's capabilities to a new level and empower the team to master digital customer expectations.

Objective:

Making Hellmann's digital team even better:
Hellmann wanted to sharpen the roles of his newly founded digital unit. Individual employees needed a “reason why” and an agile process landscape in which they could move in a targeted manner. In order to ensure exactly these framework conditions, Etribes has developed its own operating model for the digital unit.
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Meet increasing customer expectations:
Hellmann focuses on its customers in its daily business. This also includes adapting agilely to their changing expectations for logistics services. One example of this is the digitization of existing systems and services. Etribes provided support in this area and completely rethought the user experience of the customer portal.
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Build an efficient tech and data infrastructure:
The logistics sector is still very traditional. There are still a lot of things that are done manually. Here, Etribes has seized on untapped potential, for example to think of the quota, book and tracking process digitally, data-driven and efficiently. As a result, Hellmann will remain one step ahead of its competitors in the future.

Together with the Hellmann team, we worked on two project streams.

Hellmann launched digital initiatives even before we started working together. For example, a digital unit was founded as an independent division alongside IT, whose vision, role distribution and product teams needed to be sharpened. With the help of a newly developed operating model, the digital unit can now work on its own digital initiatives even more effectively, efficiently and sustainably.

From the outset, the aim of our collaboration was to enable Hellmann's digital unit to achieve independent digital success. Despite the fact that most of the project took place completely remotely, the Etribes and the Hellmann team have established an exceptionally trusting and appreciative relationship with each other. We found the courage to change the new form of organization resulting from the operating model with a new organizational chart, new roles and new processes particularly impressive.

“Working with Etribes showed me that this was just the start of the journey. We have been taking this path of agile transformation for 2.5 years now - and it is still rocky, still tough. But it just feels right and that's why we're moving on.”

Tobias Heuser, Head of Digital Products Hellmann Worldwide Logistics

Develop an operating model in 4 steps

Develop the basics & analyze the status quo

In interviews and workshops, we first assessed the status quo of the digital unit and, based on this, defined an inspiring, attractive and long-term mission statement with the vision. To help achieve this vision, we have established joint Guiding Principles — i.e. a set of moral values that provide a framework for the expected behavior and decision-making of all parties involved.

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Define target operating model

Basically, the gap between status quo and target image should be filled with the help of an operating model. The model represents in an abstract and visual way how a company wants to deliver added value to its customers. At the same time, it shows how exactly “deliver added value” and how closing the gap between status quo and target image will work. For maximum transparency and a clear distribution of roles, we used the operating model to look at and include various levels such as Governance, Culture, Processes, Organization & Technology.

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Derive proof of concept as well as actions & roadmap

Based on data, we have proven that the operating model set up in the second step is not only theoretically useful, but can also be implemented in practice and will sustainably leverage the digital unit. In addition, we have derived detailed measures that are required to iterate and continuously optimize the developed operating model and in turn bundled them into a goal-oriented roadmap for implementation.

Prepare for implementation

In order to optimally prepare for the implementation of the new operating model for Hellmann's digital unit, we have developed a roadmap with all necessary implementation steps. A key component of this roadmap is the derivation of a new organizational model, including new roles.

Optimize Hellmann's user experience

Product vision based on customer research

Only when a product meets user requirements to the maximum can a positive and emotional user experience be created. Even though most customers have similar requirements and needs for the customer portal, each user group has different motives and ultimately experiences booking their transports in a different way. It is important to understand all these different expectations first. In semi-structured interviews with existing customers, we found out how they actually use the portal and what they want from the optimized version. From the analysis results, we then derived the product vision for the new customer portal.

User experience strategy with a focus on simplicity

Instead of analog transport bookings via personal contacts via telephone or e-mail, Hellmann has been enabling its customers to use a digital customer portal for a long time. But: The booking process has been quite cumbersome so far. The interface design was outdated, had relatively long loading times and required too many clicks to complete the booking. We have optimized all these adjustments based on, for example, a user flow analysis with tracking of user and click behavior.

Design system for greater uniformity

Design systems are guidelines that contain numerous templates, instructions, rules, principles and components for easy reuse and design orientation. As a result, all project participants gain security, speed and consistency in designing digital and analog products, advertising materials, documents or presentations. The optimized principles of UX/UI and product design also became an integral part of the new Hellmann Design System.