Crocus Unlocks Efficiency with eLogii: Smooth Operations + More Profit

Background

Founded in April 2000, Crocus has grown to become the UK's leading gardening website, providing its customers with the widest range of plants from around the globe. 

A good garden centre can provide customers around 400 plant varieties to choose from. Crocus offers over 5,000!

Over the past two decades, the company has earned an impressive 30 gold medals for its plant-supplied gardens, making it the go-to source for many of the country's top garden designers. 

With its extensive selection of plants, dedicated customer service, and multiple awards, Crocus has garnered an impeccable reputation as the UK's top gardening website.

The problem

For Crocus, the challenges of the pandemic presented an opportunity to invest in technology that would help them manage their operations more effectively.

With orders increasing exponentially, they quickly realised that the solutions they had in place lacked the flexibility required to meet the demand. 

With thousands of orders per day, it was becoming impossible to manually create routes for each van. They needed a system that could optimize routes at the click of a button, enabling their team to focus on the customer.

Additionally, customer calls to find out where orders were becoming an issue for Crocus. 

In summary: 

• Routing was manual, slow and inefficient - as a result rapid scaling was held back
• Crocus were not able to collect digital Proof of Delivery in the way they wanted 
• Managing drivers was a challenge
• Customer calls were starting to become an issue

The solution

The pandemic presented many challenges, but it also presented opportunities for businesses to invest in the technology that could propel them forward. 

With eLogii, Crocus was able to streamline their operations, increase their profits and provide an improved customer experience.

Some of the key features that have been of greatest benefit to Crocus include: 

• Automated Route optimization and planning - 1 click optimization, regardless of how many orders Crocus have
• Cost Calculation - the ability to track costs across a wide variety of vehicle and driver situations. Per day, per hour, per unit distance / capacity etc

• Analytics - current and historic metrics and actionable insights on the business and operations
  
  
  
  
• Weekly planning - routing over a selected time horizon (it can be longer than 1 week!)
  
  
  
  
• Live on-map order tracking - a fully customizable order-tracking experience so customers no longer need to call to find out where there order is
  
  

In summary, eLogii has proven to be a powerful solution for Crocus, supporting profitable growth and stellar customer service.

The results

Having looked at a number of other potential solutions, eLogii was the best all-round performer when trialled by the Crocus team. 

Since Crocus switched to eLogii in late 2021, they have:

• Doubled revenue without experiencing the pitfalls and bottlenecks of rapid scaling
• Experienced a 75% reduction in planning time
• Seen a 60%+ improvement in driver productivity
• Doubled customer service effectiveness, ensuring happier customers
• Hours per day saved in customer calls
• Trustpilot satisfaction (4.4 / 5*)  increased despite extremely rapid scaling in order volumes

The team's favourite feature of eLogii is automated route optimization and planning, which runs in seconds and generates routes which are much more efficient, when compared to manual planning. 

Additionally, Crocus is now able to provide accurate information on task status and ETAs to customers, resulting in improved customer service and hours per day saved handling customer calls.

When asked what his favourite feature of eLogii has been so far Michal, lead Data Analyst, came back with a witty response:

“Really difficult to say, as making the switch from RouteXL to eLogii felt like “leaving behind a Renault Twingo and jumping to a Ferrari”. There are many features that have made planning much simpler and more scalable”