Veolia U.K. helps more organizations combat climate change with Salesforce.

With its commitment to innovation and sustainability, Veolia has transformed the waste, water, and energy management industry. Its environmental solutions are designed to help organizations reduce carbon, preserve natural resources, protect biodiversity, and combat climate change. And Veolia is leading by example. In 2019, it saved more than 114,000 tons of CO2 equivalent just by diverting garden waste from landfill sites. That’s the equivalent of taking nearly 52,000 vehicles off the road each year.

With more than 85,000 municipal and commercial customers, Veolia plays a critical role in the management of waste across the U.K. In 2019, it collected 2.3 million tons of waste and recycled more than 60 million coffee cups.

“With Salesforce, we can make waste collections more efficient, which will help to further reduce our carbon footprint and environmental impact. It’s integral to our sustainability vision,” said Stock.

Veolia isn’t just leading the sustainability charge; it’s also breaking new ground with its ambitious digital roadmap. From tracking consignments of hazardous waste and reducing water leaks to optimizing the generation and supply of heating with IoT, Veolia is transforming its operations and empowering its teams with new technologies.

“Our customers are at the heart of everything we do,” said Stock. “By embracing new digital processes and channels, we can provide richer experiences and better outcomes.”

Salesforce has been a critical part of Veolia’s digital transformation in the U.K. and Ireland since 2009. Initially implemented to empower sales teams in its waste business, the platform now touches nearly all of Veolia’s services.

“Our business is very complex,” said Gary Moody, Head of IT Architecture. “Salesforce offers great visibility and flexibility, which means we can make changes and add new features quickly and easily.”

Prior to starting its digital journey, more than 27 million sheets of paper flowed in and out of Veolia’s 400 sites every year. Digitalization hasn’t just helped to reduce this paper trail; it’s also increased efficiency for colleagues and customers.

For example, with Sales Cloud, new commercial waste customers can now be signed up within hours instead of weeks.

“The sales process is completely electronic, which means we can move prospects through the funnel faster,” said Moody. Thanks to an integration between Sales Cloud and Adobe Acrobat Sign, waste service contracts are signed by SME customers within an average of 60 minutes.

Integrations are critical to Veolia’s digital roadmap — especially as Salesforce hosts all of its master customer data. Veolia has created more than 200 APIs for a range of operational systems, which helps provide 360-degree visibility of customers and their services.

Veolia has also established APIs with external partners to provide a more seamless customer experience. For example, it can see live updates in Service Cloud of DPD (one of U.K.’s leading parcel companies) trash-bag deliveries to commercial waste customers. By tracking trash-bag requests and deliveries centrally, Veolia can better manage stock levels to meet customer demand and fulfill orders faster.

Veolia also plans to use digital technologies to bring greater visibility and efficiency to its hazardous waste services. From oily rags at a local garage to solvents on a construction site, Veolia collects more than 381,000 tons of hazardous waste every year.

“We have to ensure we follow different regulations and processes for different materials,” said Moody. “With Salesforce, we can track the status of every waste consignment and allocate it to the most appropriate site to maximize recycling opportunities.”

Each consignment is categorized in Salesforce and shared with hazardous waste crews via the Field Service app, which helps to prevent cross-contamination between different materials. The team can also use the app to cross-check consignments with logged jobs, capture customer signatures digitally, and identify the greenest route to each site.

With vehicle crews and operations teams all logging data in Field Service, Veolia will be able to manage its resources better and collect hazardous waste faster.

“By digitizing our hazardous waste processes, we can classify and dispose of materials safely and efficiently,” Moody said

With industrial customers often using multiple service lines, Veolia’s support teams need 360-degree visibility of the relationship when answering calls and emails. With Service Cloud, advisors can see case histories, service contracts, collection schedules, and invoices, which means they can respond faster and smarter to customer queries. Advisors also engage via web chat, which is powered by Live Chat and embedded into Veolia’s B2B customer portal.

Case histories captured in Service Cloud are accessed by the sales teams, which means they can have the right conversations with customers at the right time. By combining Service Cloud data with other operational metrics, Veolia can predict potential customer retention issues and take action.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, advisors had to deal with a spike in contacts from commercial waste customers wanting to suspend their collections during local lockdowns. To help streamline the process, Veolia easily created a new case type in Service Cloud within a couple of days.

By sharing this data with its operations teams, Veolia was able to keep adapting its rounds to maximize efficiency and minimize carbon emissions. Veolia kept customers informed of service changes during the pandemic by using Marketing Cloud Account Engagement for email communications and Social Studio for posts.

Veolia also uses Account Management to share the right content at the right time as prospects progress through the sales cycle. Veolia engages with more than 20,000 prospects across a range of sectors and business lines, which means it has a highly complex marketing strategy. With Account Management, it can maximize the success of this strategy.

“We’ve optimized how we handle leads and increased some of our conversion rates,” said Moody. As a result, Veolia has decreased the average time from first contact to customer order by 15 days.

Social channels have become an important lead generation tool for Veolia, especially when targeting SME customers.

“With Social Studio, we can ensure we publish content at a time when we know it’s going to reach the intended audience,” said Moody.

Veolia publishes around 50 posts per month across its Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn accounts using Social Studio. A seamless and centralized approach across the U.K. and Ireland has helped to accelerate content approvals and align messaging across different channels.

Innovation is at the core of Veolia’s strategy to build a circular economy and encourage the adoption of sustainable products and services. The company has already achieved a number of firsts, thanks to its continual investment in research and development, including the processing of 178,000 discarded TVs and monitors.

Veolia is also continuing to invest in new digital initiatives. For example, it plans to introduce chatbots to help answer simple customer queries, enhance its customer hub by migrating to Experience Cloud, and unlock richer insights through machine learning.

“The more data we capture, the more predictive we can become about our customers and the services they need to achieve their sustainability goals and reduce their carbon emissions,” said Stock. “With Salesforce, we can help more organizations minimize their environmental impact and build a greener world for generations to come.”