An international growth strategy for a fast-growing last mile delivery planning company

Abstract

Plotwise is a tech scale-up that offers continuous planning for last mile delivery. By providing data-driven AI planning software as a service, the company strives to improve the delivery planning process of its customers and thereby allowing them to handle the growth in demand for home delivery. The home delivery market is expanding at an exponential rate. The COVID-19 pandemic has pushed the e-commerce market five years ahead, more packages are delivered every day and this volume is rapidly growing. Online shoppers are reshaping the delivery economy from supply- to demand-driven. They expect their deliveries to be free, fast and convenient. At the same time, logistics operators and (online) retailers strive to find the optimal balance between costs, operational efficiency and customer experience. Improving environmental performance is getting increasingly important as well. This puts significant stress on their planning and delivery process. Plotwise seems successful in terms of its product-market fit. Hence, the management team wants to rapidly scale the company through signing new customers in at least four additional European countries between now and 2022. For this reason, the Head of Sales of Plotwise asked the author of this thesis to design a sales strategy that guides the company in entering European countries with its current product. The author created this sales strategy through performing a literature review, an internal analysis, an external analysis and quantitative market research. Strategic design principles complemented these research methodologies. This thesis presents the results of this research. In the literature review, the author discusses theoretic elements of traditional market entry strategy literature. The review synthesises the findings into a model that guided the development of the sales strategy. An internal analysis on Plotwise’s vision, mission, product, business model and culture shows that the company is fit for international expansion. However, the analysis shows that the sales team faces several challenges that possibly slow down this scaling. To tackle the identified challenges, the author presents three sales tools in combination with a roadmap for 2021 and 2022. The expectation is that these tools will improve the lead conversion, thereby increasing the number of signed customers. The author created a market analysis framework to conduct a quantitative market study. The result of this analysis is a list of most attractive countries to enter; the advice is to enter the UK market first, followed by Sweden, Norway and France. This advice deviates from an initial assumption on entry sequence as made by the management team of Plotwise. Additionally, the author advises to focus on logistic service providers (LSP), third party logistics (3PL) companies, electronics e-tailers, brands and (online) grocery stores as first customer segments. Lastly, the author advises Plotwise to position as “future-proof planning partner for delivery service optimisation”. This positioning resonates with online shopper behaviour and differs from the competition. Moreover, it leverages the core competencies of Plotwise.