Reconomy handles double-digit growth the smart way.

Sustainability and the circular economy are hot topics. Whilst customers favour brands who shout about their ESG initiatives, businesses who embrace sustainability are often more efficient, better at resource management, and more data driven.

The leading provider of outsourced recycling and sustainability services, Reconomy, part of the larger Reconomy Group of companies, has seen double-digit growth following a surge in demand for services. Whilst it’s added to its product portfolio via mergers and acquisitions, it’s the company’s focus on delivering a modern, connected customer experience that sets it apart from the competition.

In a fast-moving sector, Reconomy is disrupting the market for both customers and thousands of suppliers – 80% of which are SMEs who would otherwise lack the resources to keep up – and with Salesforce, it’s doing it at scale, laying the foundations for a more sustainable future for everyone.

Let’s take a look at how Reconomy is using MuleSoft, Sales Cloud, and Service Cloud to increase efficiency and visibility across the supply chain and customer journey.

Delivering recycling and sustainability-focused services to drive the circular economy involves multiple stakeholders, countless touchpoints, and the whole supply chain working seamlessly to deliver services on time and to budget. It also generates a lot of emissions, putting companies under pressure to capture, monitor, and track complex data.

Reconomy aims to take the complexity out of waste management, recycling, and sustainability services through digital transformation. “We created a suite of solutions to modernise the landscape. Now, we’re taking it to the next level,” said Jody Fullman, CIO at Reconomy Group. “We process up to two million waste movements per year on behalf of our customers, generating a wealth of data that can be used for optimisation.”

The company launched its digitalXchange in 2021 to create a connected, automated supplier journey. Through digitalXchange, Reconomy has enabled dynamic two-way data transfer with its supply chain, creating an interface through which suppliers can receive and accept jobs from Reconomy as well as pass back critical waste data which is then delivered to Reconomy’s onward customers. Insights are displayed in near-real time on dashboards, whilst all the documentation, such as compliance reports, that are required by law, are automatically captured in one place.

Reconomy has won awards for this innovative platform – most notably The Queens Award for Enterprise in 2021. The team decided to take efficiency to the next level by accelerating digital transformation with an API-led approach.

“Our goal is to provide near real-time connectivity and ultimately create a single view of the ecosystem. MuleSoft is an end-to-end automation platform that allows us to build quickly and scale,” said Ben Erwood, Technology & Product Director at Reconomy.

Reconomy rolled out MuleSoft to drive agility at scale, building a composable enterprise with an API-led approach. As APIs are reusable, this accelerates IT delivery, allowing the IT team to focus on creating new business value, faster.

Standardising Reconomy’s approach to integration using MuleSoft API-led connectivity and reusing APIs also makes it easier to streamline mergers and acquisitions and onboard new teams onto one central system.

“MuleSoft provides the building blocks to connect seven major internal systems to get visibility of the customer journey from prospect to purchase, and fulfilment to payment,” said Erwood. “Centralising on Salesforce means we can capture this end-to-end data, analyse it and make it available to customers and suppliers via an integrated portal.”

As well as moving the customer journey into Salesforce, the company is capturing telemetry data from multiple touchpoints to get a more holistic view of their experience.

Customers can choose between self-service via the portal or by engaging with a member of the team and enjoy the same, seamless experience.

The entire digital journey is captured and tracked in the portal connected to Salesforce. Dashboards display key metrics, service status, and fast links to all relevant documentation.

This no-touch experience is fast and efficient for customers whilst being much more cost-effective for Reconomy. It’s also an opportunity for customers to get more value from the partnership.

“Customers need accurate and comprehensive data for legal obligations, but they also use it for brand building. Today’s consumer will actively look for ESG results in company reports – they want to make emotional connections with brands who share their values,” said Dave Reynolds, Communications Manager at Reconomy.

With more centralised processes, Reconomy can track data to understand the customer experience from enquiry to quote to aftersales. This is important for delivering personalised support and consultancy to customers who want a more human touch but also helps to drive efficiencies and improve services in-house.

“When we win a new deal with a multi-site customer, we now have better visibility of the overall relationship and potential areas for growth,” explained Fullman. “That means the customer service and operational sales teams can work together to drive more value out of the contract and provide a better service to that customer. It’s win-win for everyone.”

This also helps the company to forecast revenue more accurately – whilst previously it could see how much a deal was worth, it was much more difficult to calculate how much revenue it had actually generated.

Sales Cloud and Service Cloud support Reconomy’s outsourced waste management, recycling and sustainability-focused service activity, which are its core areas of business. Salesforce acts as the single source of truth for everyone, and automated workflows guide the customer through a structured flow for a smoother experience.

This simplified environment makes it easier for new starters to get productive faster and eliminates time-consuming manual tasks for the overall workforce.

“Sales Cloud gives us a single view of our pipeline, with the entire sales process running on Salesforce. Dashboards allow users to overlay call volumes or revenue performance aligned to our Big Data roadmap strategies. We have visibility of the exact position in the sales lifecycle, which has been a game changer for us,” said Fullman.

Meanwhile, on average 8,500 cases are handled in Service Cloud every week. Bringing customer service, which was once fragmented across departments, onto one platform has eliminated bottlenecks, swapped shared inboxes for digital cases, and provides greater clarity for managers. It also centralises multiple channels into one console.

Service Cloud Voice is integrated with Natterbox to provide customers with a consistent and personalised experience while capturing real-time performance metrics to drive continuous improvement. Colleagues have at-a-glance visibility of the customer history, open cases, and all the information they need to have productive conversations. Salesforce CPQ, part of Revenue Cloud, is also used to centralise quoting and get prices back to customers and prospects faster.

“We track internal metrics such as time to quote and measure the impact of campaigns, so we can continuously optimise and refine our processes,” said Tony Munro, Marketing Director at Reconomy Group. “We’re a high volume, high frequency business – everything needs to be as seamless as possible.”

Reconomy is supporting customers on their journey to embrace the circular economy and build a more sustainable future. And Salesforce is helping it to embed sustainability into its own digital environment.

“Salesforce enables us to deliver efficiency faster and at scale. With automation and faster provisioning, our people have more time to focus on meeting targets, winning customers, and growing our business,” said Munro. “We have infinite versatility, and we can continue to challenge the status quo and dream up great new solutions to make life easier for our customers.”