Creating a single digital proposition from multiple acquisitions.
Simplifying complexity. Integrating acquired Planet businesses’ into a single digital proposition, whilst accelerating growth through new digital channels.
Planet supports 800,000 customers across 120 countries and is supported by a global workforce of 2,500 people. The company was founded to assist merchants, acquirers, and shoppers by providing payment and tax free shopping services globally for some of the world's best known brands and tourist destinations. Planet has a vision to simplify the payments industry by creating truly integrated payment solutions across the retail and hospitality sectors that serve a wide range of customers. Their goal is to put the customer first, creating seamless and frictionless payment transactions. To achieve this feat, the historically led payments and tax free shopping provider made a number of business acquisitions in the hospitality, retail and e-commerce verticals.
Challenge.
The initial challenge was to simplify the complexity of consolidating five different business value propositions. This included the integration of their technology, and the customer facing lead generation propositions, into one coherent, digitally led customer journey. These digital channels will eventually become the main lead generation channel for the business.
Planet’s initial goals were:
Create a single customer facing website and product proposition
Increase the number of leads generated via digital channels
Decommission the old legacy sites and company brands
Undertake a detailed research phase to better understand their customers pains, needs and requirements
Create a customer experience (CX) strategy and solution to be implemented
Produce a digital design system from the new Planet brand
Implement a new DXP solution with end to end lead tracking capabilities
Approach.
The project began in July 2022, with the simultaneous delivery of a customer-facing MVP that would begin to generate leads for the business. Alongside a depth-CX strategy to explore customer needs, desired outcomes and the plotting of the optimal journey for lead generation was delivered. This culminated in a detailed digital roadmap to be implemented against the strategy that was formed. The first iteration of the platform went live in November 2022 and is seen as the foundation that will be built on over the coming months and years.
It consists of a single digital brand proposition for all of their differing products/services. The website consolidates Planet’s offer into an organised and digestible format that will allow the company to upsell, cross-sell and attract new customers whose needs will be served with one of the first truly integrated payments platforms.
The new platform will become the main lead generation source for the business by 2025.
Outcome.
Customer journeys are monitored from marketing engagement through to sales, this funnel management allows the business to react and respond to the types of leads that are being received and converted. Early data from January and February 2023 is positive with a weekly increase in marketing qualified leads.
The website will continue to be developed throughout the rest of the 2023 with a focus on lead generation.
The newly consolidated website; www.weareplanet.com
Methods & Tools.
The information below details a selection of the methodologies, techniques and tools used to deliver the project..
Methods
Customer journey mapping
Acquisition assessments
Competitor research
Qualitative & Quantitative research
Job story & segmentation development
Customer profile mapping
Short + long-term CX recommendation
Implementation plan
Roadmap creation
Jobs to be done (JTBD)
Impact / Effort prioritisation
Tools
Drupal
Acquia Cloud
Salesforce
Theydo (customer journey mapping
Slack
Mural
Google docs
Figma