• Helped the business continue to succeed in the increasingly competitive courier and logistics marketplace

• Reduced IT support costs for email by up to 80%

• Extended access to mobile applications from 150 to more than 4,000 team members in six months, with the project continuing

• Moved organisation-wide practice from attaching files to emails to sharing and collaborating on files

• Shifted from an expensive phone-based conferencing facility to an anytime, anywhere conferencing facility for top and middle management, which has accelerated decision-making

• Adopted decision-making tools that can be accessed anywhere from any device

Among Indian courier and logistics businesses, using DTDC has expanded rapidly since its foundation in 1990. Starting with seed capital of less than US$2,000, DTDC has grown to a US$175 million business with operations across the country and internationally. The business is second only to the government-owned India Post in the courier and logistics sector with 522 offices, more than 10,700 franchisees, and a 5,000 employee-strong workforce. It handles 450,000 shipments—primarily small to medium parcels—per day, has a direct presence in 12 countries, a presence through associates in 22 countries, and operates 16 gateway hubs.

DTDC’s mission is to become India’s preferred express parcel provider with a focus on the consumer and the company aims to be valued at INR 5,000 crore (about US$778 million) by 2020. However, like all businesses in the courier and logistics sector, DTDC is facing greater competition. Most of the large ecommerce businesses in the country have created their own express delivery arms and these are contributing to heightened customer expectations. "Businesses and consumers want information and answers now rather than later today or tomorrow," Mrinal Chakraborty, Executive Vice President, Technology and Innovation, DTDC, says. "For example, customers are looking for direct API integration between their systems and our tracking tools, rather than a mundane, old-style MIS-driven approach."

"The express delivery businesses themselves are eager to embrace trends such as increased predictability of delivery, greater capacity utilization, and how vehicles can be run in the most efficient way possible."

While the business had implemented cloud- based office productivity applications in 2016, these applications were not meeting its needs, Chakraborty says. "What we observed after three years, despite a considerable cost, these applications were only being used for email rather than as a full suite of collaboration tools," he says.

"For example, if a simple presentation file needed to be delivered for decision-making, it had to be sent to about 20 stakeholders," he adds. "We would then have to collect feedback from each and aggregate it into a final draft. This approach compromised productivity and decision-making, and meant multiple versions of data were circulating within the organisation." DTDC also wanted to extend mobility from a small group within the business to the wider organisation as part of a broader project to improve collaboration, productivity, and decision-making. In addition, the business intended to improve the usability and relevance of its intranets to its employees.

Furthermore, Chakraborty and his team planned to help improve collaboration within and the performance of DTDC’s more than 10,700 franchisees in responding to customer needs.

Based on his previous experience with Google Workspace, Chakraborty recommended the cloud-based suite of intelligent applications to DTDC’s senior management team. He also provided a comprehensive cost-effort-benefit analysis to back up his recommendation.

DTDC had started with a three-week proof of concept exercise spanning 20 users across the business. Having determined that Google Workspace met its business requirements, the courier and logistics provider had chosen a ‘big bang’ implementation across about 5,000 users. DTDC switched over to Google Workspace on 23 June 2017 and undertook an extensive user acceptance and training program—called Project Liberty—over the following two weeks with the assistance of a 24-hours-per-day, seven-days-per-week helpdesk.

"We made hundreds of calls to our employees to explain the move, created and distributed an FAQ, and provided extensive training at regional office and branch office levels," Chakraborty says. The business also displayed posters and banners at all DTDC offices, sent teaser messages to users, and provided daily Google Workspace usage tips over a three-week period.

"We completed that part of the move in about six days and by 1 July 2017 we had migrated all databases and all old emails to Google Workspace. Two weeks later, we had signed off the job," Chakraborty says.

DTDC has reaped several rewards from its move to Google Workspace. The amount the business spends on video conferencing has fallen from about US$5,000 per month to nearly zero as it takes advantage of the voice and video capabilities of Google Meet. The organisation has also been able to surrender one of the internet links used to support its previous email service and reduced the costs of supporting email clients by about 80%.

"Largely because the volume of email attachments has fallen dramatically since we moved to Gmail—despite the fact our business has grown significantly—we have not had to upgrade any of our links over the last year or so," Chakraborty says. "Team members are increasingly sending links through Google Drive instead." The ability to store files in the cloud through Google Drive has also enabled DTDC to eliminate the need to perform local backups of users’ files.

Meanwhile, team members are also increasingly using Google Calendar to make appointments and check the availability of colleagues and superiors for meetings.