Dwain McDonald

Tag: dpduk

  • DPD’s 25-25-25 vision for a greener economy

    DPD’s 25-25-25 vision for a greener economy

    DPD’s former CEO Dwain McDonald on the opportunity for a green recovery.

    It’s not every day that a company changes a successful and long-standing strategy. And while I was CEO at DPD UK, it’s not something I would have undertaken lightly. But after ten years of sticking to the same formula, that’s exactly what DPD did in January 2020. Since 2010, the 1-2-3 strategy had determined every decision taken in the boardroom and beyond, propelling the company from no.4 to no.1 in the market:

    1. Deliver the best service money can buy,
    2. Use the best technology available,
    3. Recruit, retain and develop the most customer-centric people.

    But nearly a year ago, we developed a crucial new fourth element: ‘Be the UK’s Leader in Sustainable Delivery’, and launched a comprehensive and dedicated website to engage as many other stakeholders as possible.

    The change in strategy followed DPD’s first major steps in a ‘green adventure’ – opening the UK’s first two all-electric depots in London in 2018. Since then the company moved rapidly through the gears on a journey towards decarbonisation.

    This year, a massive 20% of £100m investment into new vehicles was spent on electric vehicles. 561 EVs have been added to the fleet since the start of 2020, resulting in more than 700 at 74 depots nationwide, which means that 10% of all volumes are now delivered totally emission-free. So, this year DPD should save 5,000 tonnes of CO2 versus 2019 – that’s the equivalent of planting 20,000 trees.

    In short, CO2 emitted per parcel became as important to DPD as the right-first-time delivery rates.

    Building back better

    It felt like our new strategic direction was very in tune with the times. Thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, people took time to stop and think about how we can all deliver a more sustainable future. There has been much talk in both national and international politics of ‘building back better’, of a ‘green industrial revolution’ and of ‘creating a climate-resilient, zero-carbon economy’.

    There’s a saying in the Far East that the definition of the word ‘crisis’ is ‘an opportunity riding a dangerous wind’… so perhaps the single biggest opportunity presented by Covid-19 has been the chance to take a step back and reflect on what kind of planet we want to leave behind for our children and their children?

    We’re already seen huge enthusiasm for emission-free parcel delivery. Customers have absolutely loved it – shippers and shoppers alike. Companies switched to using DPD purely because the company was going green.

    And this year I lost count of how many consumers took to social media to shout about their driver turning up in a quiet, clean and green DPD vehicle rather than the diesel vans that all parcel carriers have been using for decades.

    25-25-25 Vision

    DPD moved faster than anyone else in the sector towards decarbonisation. The company is on track to deliver over 10 million parcels emission-free by the end of 2020, up from just one million in 2019. There is a page on the DPD Green website that shows live stats of  emissions performance, including the following KPIs:

    1. Number of EVs on the road today (637);
    2. Parcels delivered YTD emission-free (nearly 7 million);
    3. YTD CO2 savings (over 3,000 tonnes) – the equivalent of planting 12,000 trees*

    (*figures correct as of September 2020)

    This page has also been popular with the 70,000 unique visitors who visited the site since January. If you think these figures are impressive, the 25-25-25 vision is to deliver 100m parcels a year (which will be 25% of all volumes) on all-electric vehicles in 25 UK cities by 2025.

    The government needs to do more, more quickly

    We hit many unexpected bumps in the road on our journey to zero emissions. Bureaucratic red tape and outdated legislation caused moments of genuine frustration. For example, getting permission to run The Paxster – an innovative EV from Norway – on the streets of London, or planning permission to use city-centre sites as electric micro-depots.

    I raised these issues in a meeting with the Prime Minister last December and also asked him to encourage manufacturers to make more EVs at more affordable prices and to invest much more quickly in rolling out nationwide charging infrastructure.

    DPD was also a major sponsor of the highly respected Low Carbon Vehicle Partner Annual Conference on 15 July where the keynote speaker was Grant Shapps, Secretary of State for Transport. As a result, the company started to work with the Department for Transport and other key experts on a project to decarbonise transport. The government wants to ‘eliminate greenhouse gas emissions from every stage of the whole transport system’ and DPD is on a mission to help make that happen as quickly as possible.

    Innovation when the stakes are high

    Pivoting a company in a new direction means taking risks. It means taking a chance on new and emerging technology. It means challenging old structures and ways of doing things. It means making sure your people are on board.

    A new strategic direction to be the UK’s most sustainable carrier saw DPD taking several innovative steps forwards:

    • The first operator to begin trials of the new VN5 Electric Van manufactured in Coventry by LEVC – famous for building London’s black cabs;
    • DPD was also the first operator to begin trials of the Volta – the world’s first purpose-built full-electric 16-tonne delivery vehicle;
    • The company developed its own zero emissions electric-assist cargo bike, the EAV P1, in collaboration with an Oxfordshire company whose background is in Formula 1;
    • £52,300 was invested in EV home chargers for DPD drivers (supported by the Government’s OLEV grant scheme);
    • Through our innovative Eco-Fund, we’ve donated £140,000 this year from the sale of recycled shrink wrap and pallets to environmental good causes – mainly to support primary schools.

     

    I’d like to think that the company made a great start. But when it comes to the environment, the stakes could not be higher and to achieve the 25-25-25 Vision will require ever greater levels of imagination, teamwork and tenacity.

    To find out more visit the company’s dedicated information website DPD Green and the Green DPD Blog for the latest in green and sustainable thought leadership.

  • Let’s plan early for the November rush

    Let’s plan early for the November rush

    Former DPD UK CEO Dwain McDonald explains the upsides of having a ‘Cyber Fortnight’

    I had just finished taking part in a virtual ‘This is Us’ event – the welcome event held every six weeks for the hundreds of new starters joining Team DPD. During my session, I talked a lot about the company’s six core values: Honesty, Accountability, Flexibility, Passion, Hard Work and Respect. 

    These aren’t just nice words on a wall, they define what the company stands for and what the team cares about. They’re the qualities desired when recruiting new people and they describe the attitude you need to have a long career with with the company. In short, the 6 values are DPD’s DNA.

    During the event, a new starter said: “Can you give me an example of how you bring the DNA to life?” In this post, I wanted to answer that question by sharing with you just how much these six values matter to the whole team. Not only in terms of how everyone worked together internally, but also in the way the company communicated with customers during these extraordinary times to prepare for a monster Cyber Weekend and Christmas.

    Flexing up for Peak – why it’s time to plan for the November rush 

    We only had 74 working days until the start of Cyber Weekend on Black Friday (27 November). This annual four-day retail extravaganza marks the start of the holiday season and sees Brits spending an estimated £7billion in a bid to bag a bargain for Christmas. 

    Last year more than 75% of these purchases were made online for delivery to home addresses by DPD and its competitors, and this year, because of the pandemic, I had expected that figure to rise even higher. That’s why DPD predicted carrying 400,000 more parcels on Cyber Tuesday than on the same night last year.

    74 days might have seemed a long way off but the truth is that we had been planning for Cyber Weekend since January and fine-tuning plans with customers since May – this is partly how we held ourselves accountable. 

    Because of a surge in online shopping caused by lockdown, we had 9,000 delivery drivers – 3,000 more than the previous year and we worked hard to recruit another 3,000 before October. the company had also recruited 500 new managers, spent £100m on new vehicles plus another £60m to open 12 new depots and a further £40m on technology.

    Despite this unprecedented investment, our Honesty value meant we had reminded retailers that the UK parcels sector still did not the have infinite next-day capacity in the November-December Peak. 

    That’s why I urged all our customers to plan ahead as far as possible and resist the temptation to leave their logistics until the last minute or to hope that Christmas would save their year.

    We had never experienced Christmas in a pandemic year (well not that I can remember) and so any kind of ‘copy-paste-repeat’ approach from 2019 simply would not have worked in 2020. For a start, we had delivered the kinds of volumes in August that we usually didn’t see until November. 

    And you just couldn’t put all your 2020 eggs in a 4-day (or even a 4-week) basket, cross your fingers and hope for the best in terms of on-time delivery and customer experience.

    Why? Because for DPD, 2020’s Cyber Weekend was already a more finely tuned operation than ever before. 

    Two years ago, in order to ensure we could deliver the best doorstep experience, we had asked customers to make volume forecasts three months in advance – and then stick to them. The vast majority were supportive, appreciated our Honesty, and realised it was the best way to give their own customers a reliable service.

    Next level planning

    This year, because of the pandemic, the company decided to take planning to the next level. 

    So for example, when we discussed forecasts with customers, instead of just saying ‘you can send me 10,000 parcels on Cyber Monday’, we now said: ‘We can deliver to your customers on time as long as you can send me 6,000 parcels before 7pm. Of these, we need to receive 3,000 between 11am and 3pm. Then we can handle the final 4,000 after 7pm.”

    In order to meet retailers halfway, we were flexible and rejigged our operations so that delivery drivers went out in waves, with the first wave hitting the road at 7am.

    Again the more forward-thinking retailers loved our Honesty and saw the whole Cyber project as a partnership based on Respect, where each party aimed for a win-win by sticking to their side of the bargain. We believed this was an accountable approach to the challenge we faced together.

    Of course, forecasts can and do change. And thanks to our Intelligent Operations Centre (real-time ‘mission control’ for Peak…) we were still able to offer Flexibility. 

    For example, if ‘Customer A’ decided they needed less volume than forecast on a given day, the spare sortation capacity could be switched immediately to ‘Customer B’ – who had just requested more of our resource, perhaps because a promotion had gone better than expected.  

    Facebook fans and the final mile

    We know that many of our customers on the doorstep really value the relationship they have with their local DPD Driver. In fact, dozens of them set up Facebook ‘fan pages’ dedicated to the drivers who deliver to their homes. 

    I’d like to think that this is because we recruited and retained people who showed a genuine Passion for the DPD brand. But in these challenging times, DPD drivers also had to be super-flexible: I asked 2,000 of them to switch to a different route and often a different depot from their usual one. This is because 22% of our postcodes were moved from one site to another this year to handle the impact of COVID-19 and better manage the ‘fall to earth’ – i.e. the areas that received the highest volumes during Peak.

    Can we have a ‘Cyber Fortnight’ please?

    One of my more forward-looking friends recently asked me what I wanted for Christmas. I replied that I’d like a Cyber Fortnight instead of a Cyber Weekend. 

    The team is passionate about giving customers a super-consistent performance across the whole of Peak so it would be great if retailers could ‘flatten the curve’ – by going early with their discounts and spreading them over two weeks instead of four days. 

    By working together to set customer expectations and move volume a little earlier and a little later than normal,  then we could keep everyone happy.

    Delivering a Dazzling Peak

    Back to the ‘new starters’ event. The question I was asked by a new member of DPD, plus the whole experience of preparing for Peak since the outbreak of COVID-19 made me think long and hard about discussions with customers and all our other stakeholders. 

    So in summary:

    • We were 74 days from our biggest ever Peak, and knew it would be Hard Work!
    • Flexibility of our team was more crucial than ever before
    • It’s a crucial part of DPD’s DNA to set expectations and then be accountable
    • We had the Passion to go the extra mile and get it right for the customer
    • We must respect each other and treat people how we would like to be treated ourselves
    • Honesty is absolutely paramount: providing we shared information and worked together on the common goal of delighting the consumer then it could be a win-win for everyone