A roadmap to industry-leading digital journeys for members

With a growing base of over 1 million members, the Caravan and Motorhome Club are one of the UK’s largest membership organisations, and no stranger to navigating change and disruption.

“Help us stay relevant in the market”

Client

Between membership portals, booking systems, and external web apps, The Caravan and Motorhome Club has built a dependency on legacy systems which has made it difficult to identify the best ways to innovate. The Club turned to us when looking for a partner to help drive and deliver their digital customer experience agenda and challenge how they innovate in the marketplace. 

In order to stay relevant, the club knows that they need to exceed member expectations in order to gain market share.

Challenge

We built and followed through a plan to tackle digital transformation on multiple fronts: infrastructure, customer experience and strategy. Since starting to work together in 2018, we have:

Our ongoing partnership has so far tackled different challenges at the digital technology strategy and business strategy levels.

Solution

Complex freight bookings made easy

Eurotunnel is one of the railway shuttle services operating in the Channel Tunnel between the UK and France.

“Help lorry drivers book freight journeys across the British Channel”

With requirements for tracing goods, invoicing account customers, loading based on size and type of freight being carried, and different legislation requirements between the UK and EU, it’s a lengthy and complex challenge. The gap Eurotunnel had was providing an easy and efficient mobile experience for regular hauliers to share this information as part of their booking and for their logistics teams to make sense of it all.

Eurotunnel’s Le Shuttle Freight service needs every one of its 1.4 million annual freight vehicles to pre-book every single journey and share details about what is being transported.

Mapping out all the journey and booking variants helped us to create the optimum path for users. We experimented with design variants, a high fidelity prototype for user validation and internal and external testing to develop the first iteration of the app. This led to a full clickable prototype, specs and technical functionality prior to handing over to the internal team for onward development.

We needed to simplify and personalise, so that drivers’ details, number plates and regular cargo could all be pre-completed in the app, and the journey made more efficient for both customer and Eurotunnel.

Plus, Eurotunnel and their freight drivers have already benefitted from the improvements in the booking experience.

Phase one of the booking journey has been implemented in spite of Covid, Brexit and legislation changes.

Results

18,000 qualifications delivered at speed to offset Covid-19 in Sport

The Chartered Institute for the Management of Sport and Physical Activity (CIMSPA) is the professional development body for the UK's sport and physical activity sector.

“Help us launch a product in less than a month.”

CIMSPA needed to quickly put in a solution to match training providers with those seeking qualifications, ready for when sport opened back up again.

The world of sports management was on the brink of losing 30,000 professionals as a result of Covid-19, with expiring qualifications and the closure of facilities.

ReTrain works to identify training needs and matches them (against geographical and socio-economic data, as well as organisational need) with registered training providers, through a web interface to quickly bring the parties together.

Along with CIMSPA and Sport England we created ReTrain - a web application developed to MVP launch in 4 weeks. The following two agile sprints got it  completion within 11 weeks of having received the brief.

We’ve since moved on in a programme of continual improvement, currently working on its second phase.

A hugely successful programme for CIMSPA, delivered at pace. We achieved 18,000 lockdown qualifications, 600+ training requests and 100 UK employers upskilled their activity workforce.

Timetabling SAAS for one of Europe’s leading transport brands

Arriva UK Bus is one of the main bus operators in the UK. Their customers rely on over 5,000 vehicles that cover hundreds routes all over the country, 365 days a year.

“Help us to turn data into on-demand timetables.”

Routes and timetables weren’t made available to commuters until they physically got to the bus stop to find them printed on a nearby post. 

In the backend, their timetabling data was split into a number of components like day/time, geo coordinates and polygons of ‘zones’, which made it complex, difficult to understand and impossible to translate into a usable service for customers.

Believe it or not, Arriva Bus’ daily customers didn’t know when to expect their bus.

We could then syndicate those data sources through the business for ticket/route purchase, downloads, brochures, bus stops and route planning on mobile and website.

Using a wide array of technologies and impressive maths, we created a web service that could interpret the various data sources and repurpose them into timetables.

For its customers, it meant they can plan their journeys on the fly. Even though the core website and booking engine has changed since, we’re still running the SaaS dynamic timetabling service across the Arriva digital estate to this date.

From no timetables to dynamic, up-to-date, online schedules - this was a huge business shift for Arriva.

Individualised customer experiences for seven sister brands

The UK-based Woburn Estate includes a number of properties, including Woburn Safari Park, Woburn Abbey, Golf Club, Hotel and Bedford Estates.

“Help us create a better experience for our customers and marketing team.”

All seven of the Woburn Estate brands run based off different business models, and have different audiences. And all of them are also in need of a strong digital presence, with a level of coordination and control over sprawling platforms and technologies.

How do you bring together seven disparate websites and brands with a common heritage under control?

We built a core engine through Optimizely DXP to underpin the entire ecosystem, giving individual brand, functionality and content flexibility. For each platform, we let each brand’s business and customer goals lead the experience design process. It meant the central team at Woburn can manage all seven sites through a common CMS interface, and deliver personalised journeys to visitors. It also gives us the flexibility to add new sites at light speed, without high cost or fresh development delays. 

We went under the bonnet in the Explore part of our process, to uncover the strategic needs of the Estate, its employees, its customers and technology requirements.

The Safari Park’s website is seing daily site users rising threefold to 15,000 per day, triple the page views per session and has dropped the bounce rate from over 50% to 14%.

The Woburn teams now have a high performing site across the estate.

Redefining the holiday search experience

The holiday search experience isn't fit for purpose. We go on holiday to change how we feel, but we book our getaways based on destination names, endless choice and how other people experience places. It's often confusing, frustrating and tedious.

“What if you could book your holiday based on how you want to feel?”

We asked ourselves… how else could holiday searches happen? And how could technology be used to reimagine this experience?

How could we possibly know if our holiday choices will deliver on our expectations, when the search experience doesn't allow us to express what we're looking for?

A vision for a tech-infused ecosystem, but tech is not the star here. The experience is. One where you create a collection of getaway moments, with sound, tastes, views... Beyond destination and categories. One where the most frustrating parts of the booking process are replaced by sensory-led exploration, to unlock holiday decisions that are true to you. In this vision, technology redefines the dreaming and planning phases of travel.

Our answer was Gini - an ingenious concept for a platform that will allow you to curate, share and book the holiday you want, based only on how you want to feel when you get there.

You get to create soundscapes to match your perfect holiday atmosphere. Gini detects pure moments of joy with face recognition technology. And learns what tickles your tastebuds as you swipe left and right. All to help surface the ideal holiday you never knew you wanted. Without ever clicking on a category again.

Let your senses guide how you feel. And techology to understand what you like, love and crave. So you can curate your atmosphere, your moments, your space. And share with your friends and family too.

Work

Digital transformation in action.
Relevant today, built for tomorrow.

A roadmap to industry-leading digital journeys for members

Complex freight bookings made easy

18,000 qualifications delivered at speed to offset Covid-19 in Sport

Further work

Timetabling SAAS for one of Europe’s leading transport brands

Individualised customer experiences for seven sister brands

Redefining the holiday search experience

Work

Digital transformation in action. Relevant today, built for tomorrow.

A roadmap to industry-leading digital journeys for members

Complex freight bookings made easy

18,000 qualifications delivered at speed to offset Covid-19 in Sport

Further work

Timetabling SAAS for one of Europe’s leading transport brands

Individualised customer experiences for seven sister brands

Redefining the holiday search experience

Digital transformation in action.
Relevant today, built for tomorrow.