The team totally get the Parkdean business from a commercial point of view and have turned that understanding into vast improvements in the customer journey. They are a ‘straight down the line’ company.
Neil Hope
Technology & Change Director at Parkdean Resorts
60% increase in online revenue
23% increase in conversions
100m in online revenue
We act as Parkdean’s digital partner, working in blended squads with their own digital experts to rapidly research, solution and deliver the best-in-class experiences that their customers expect and need.
Parkdean Resorts owns and operates 66 holiday parks across England, Scotland and Wales and is the UK’s largest holiday park operator. Their digital estate comprises support for holiday bookings, holiday home sales, self service booking changes and on-park information. The Parkdean platform serves huge numbers of customers, and 85% of holiday sales are completed online, delivering more than £100m in revenue for the business.
The company has a strong focus on customer experience, striving to offer the best possible holiday from booking to departure, for people holidaying on their parks, and those owning or seeking to buy caravans and lodges.
Phase 1
The challenge
Parkdean were seeking a digital partner who could drive their vision, and bring additional skills and expertise to complement and augment the internal team. They needed a partner who would both work closely alongside their people, but also be able to lead on enterprise architecture and best practice, all informed by a CX and commercial focus.
Phase 2
The approach
We started our journey with Parkdean in 2015, initially as one of several trusted technology delivery partners, executing briefs for a range of digital projects. As Parkdean’s ambitions evolved, we have collectively matured our ways of working together, allowing us to get closer to their business and allow the delivery of a greater volume of work.
A project-to-project model had delivered some impactful change, but by 2021 the start/stop that a project model naturally entails was holding back progress.
Our teams worked together to develop a new model for engagement, embedding our expertise at all levels within digital delivery, from enterprise architecture, through CX improvements, to day-to-day delivery.
Each product-focussed squad is responsible for deeply understanding the specific needs of a customer in a particular phase of their Parkdean journey, and for delivering technology enabled experiences to support those needs. Squads can be rapidly scaled, to provide surge capacity for new initiatives.
Work is delivered using an Agile methodology, working in rapid cycles of discovery, prioritising work packages by customer experience measures, and with a continuous product optimisation mindset.
This rapid development programme is underpinned by a robust technology approach, from application design, to infrastructure and integrations.
Migration
Migration of digital estate from Sitecore 9 to Sitecore 10
Cloud
Migration from on-premise hosting to a modern, scalable cloud infrastructure
Sitecore
Architect and build the infrastructure to support new Sitecore 10 estate
Azure
Integration services architecture providing the microservices underpinning the platform
Best practice
Lead on Sitecore best practice and how this is balanced with commercial reality
Technical input
Provide technical and process input across the programme roadmap
Phase 3
The outcome
Like many businesses, Parkdean had a powerful web platform that supported much of their business, but as the platform had grown and extended over time, the user journey was not always seamless. The underlying technology was relatively monolithic, meaning that routine system maintenance could cause disruption across the estate.
In partnership with Shout, Parkdean have been able to bring a new focus on delivering robust, secure and delightful experiences with the customer at their heart.
Today’s Parkdean digital estate is mature, stable and performant, generating £100m in online revenue, and 40m website sessions each year.
Easy to use
The easy-to-use Sitecore web platform has delivered impressive ROI for the business and stayed robust during peak times, including unprecedented trends through the pandemic.
Customer experiences are underpinned by a modern, API-driven architecture, reducing dependency and load on line-of-business systems and allowing rapid transfer of data between systems.
By working in blended squads with Parkdean’s own team, we have a deep understanding of Parkdean’s digital and technology estate, and of how the business works and runs. We have been trusted to both lead and deliver business-critical programmes, and to adopt and deliver projects started by other suppliers. We lead on architecture and Sitecore best practice, creating a pragmatic balance between technical and commercial drivers for change.
Foundations
Our close working relationship creates the foundations to build a new phase of the Parkdean journey with them – customer centric, personalised and seamless end to end experience.
Looking forward, we are continuing to support Parkdean in reaching out to customers at just the right time, making meaningful connections with them and letting them know ‘we’re thinking ahead for you’.
Looking to achieve something similar?
Book a call with our team to discuss how we can help.
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