Cloud-based customer relationship management helps fast-growing online service cook up a storm in the takeaway market
As a growing online business, Just Eat is using Salesforce to maximise revenue generation and expand its customer base around the globe.
Founded in 2001, Just Eat has become the champion of online takeaway ordering, connecting 34,000 restaurants to eight million registered users in 13 countries.
“Our vision is to make takeaway ordering quicker and easier for consumers and restaurants alike,” commented Leigh Phillipson, Just Eat’s international sales director. “For consumers we provide convenient and easy access to a great takeaway experience, and for restaurants we help improve their business.”
Generating more than £700 million in food sales per year for its partner restaurants, the online takeaway portal has experienced strong growth in a short timeframe. Such rapid expansion, however, can put even the best business processes under pressure.
Managing international growth
“Reporting, lead generation, collaboration – everything was getting more complex as we expanded,” explained Phillipson. “With a small sales team, using spreadsheets is relatively simple. But with 250 people in multiple geographies, you need a more flexible and customisable approach.”
Just Eat found that approach with Salesforce. The company first rolled out Sales Cloud and Chatter in December 2011, and now has 250-plus users in nine countries.
The software user-friendly interface was a key factor for Just Eat. As Phillipson said: “We didn’t want to spend lots of time on training – we needed something intuitive and familiar. We also wanted a highly flexible and customisable platform.” Just Eat implemented its first iteration of the provider’s Sales Cloud in just under a month. The company deliberately kept the initial implementation simple so it could drive quick adoption.
Just Eat has since gone on to add more features, and now uses the solution for tracking opportunities, contacts and accounts as well as generating analytics. “I’m not particularly technical, but I find it easy to add a new field or item to a drop-down menu,” added Phillipson. “This flexibility means we can continue to keep the solution relevant to our needs without having to bring in expensive development resources.”
Feeding the sales pipeline
Just Eat can also avoid additional expenditure when expanding to new territories. For example, a pizza restaurant in São Paulo is not that different from a pizza restaurant in London – and that means Just Eat can use both existing processes and templates rather than start from scratch.
This has helped the company reduce the on-boarding time for new restaurants by 50%. “Sales Cloud enables us to take a repeatable approach when on-boarding new customers while still allowing for local differences, which accelerates time to value,” commented Giorgio Ponticelli, Just Eat’s group business development director and managing director for Benelux.
The software also helps the company identify which restaurants to target to maximise revenue generation. With Just Eat receiving a small percentage from every online order, it needs volume and variety to stay profitable. And with a vast pipeline of potential restaurants, it needs to focus on the leads that will deliver the best return. As Phillipson said: “We need to sign up the restaurants that our customers want to order from.”
“Sales Cloud has helped us balance quality with quantity by giving us better visibility of the leads we want to follow and ensuring that we strike the right mix of cuisine types in different areas.”
Increasing teamwork productivity
Just Eat is also using Sales Cloud to pinpoint skills gaps in its sales team. Phillipson explained: “We can see how many leads have been visited and how many sales have been closed by every member of the team. This enables us to identify if an individual needs additional training as well as increase the overall productivity of our sales operation.”
Productivity is one of the biggest benefits of the solution for Just Eat. It’s reduced the administration overhead. It has automated reporting and made the sales teams more mobile. For example, the company has extended its use of Sales Cloud to tablet and smartphone devices, which means the sales teams can maximise the time they spend in the field. “The sales teams no longer have to use a computer or laptop to log information. They can on-board a customer right there and then,” Phillipson said.
Thanks to Chatter, Salesforce’s enterprise social networking tool, the sales teams can also share their experiences and successes in the field more easily. As Phillipson reported: “It’s highly unlikely that a member of the sales team in São Paulo would call their colleague in London to give them a high five for a new win. But Chatter makes this possible. It breaks down geographical boundaries making it easer for the team to share best practice.”
He concluded: “Salesforce has freed up our sales teams to spend more time talking to customers. Managers no longer have to spend several hours a week generating reports, which means they can focus on growing our restaurant network and improving the takeaway ordering process.”
Following the success of the implementation across its sales business, Just Eat is now considering extending the solution to other areas of the business. “We want to maximise every Salesforce licence we have purchased, which means we are constantly looking at how we can expand our usage to deliver greater business value,” added Ponticelli.
