Head of Performance Improvement in Manchester

Parcel2Go is a private equity backed business with revenue of over £100 million and ambitious growth plans. In the UK, historically people have used the Post Office to send parcels. However, Post Offices are not always open at convenient times, and they are often significantly more expensive than the alternatives. Despite this, they dominate a market for consumers and small/micro businesses worth £1.5 billion, with 12 million potential customers and over 90% market share.

In 2001, Parcel2Go's founders decided the Post Office needed some competition and founded Parcel2Go.com as a lower cost and more convenient alternative. At the heart of the offer is an easy to use comparison website that helps customers quickly compare and choose the best delivery option for their needs. Parcel2Go does not handle the physical collection or delivery of parcels - this is done by our network of over 20 carriers including DPD, UPS and Evri. Unlike other comparison sites, Parcel2Go's customer service team supports the customer throughout the shipping journey, from before the parcel is sent through to safe delivery.

Parcel2Go.com is now the UK's leading parcel delivery comparison website, has helped over 2 million customers and also operates in Spain and Ireland. The Group also runs a white-label arm providing technology, marketing and customer service to 13 carrier brands across Europe, and a pallet delivery arm following the 2017 acquisition of National Pallets.

This role has become available due to internal role changes. The vacancy creates an opportunity to reset the brief around what we now see as the single biggest lever for Operations performance over the next three years: aggressive, intelligent exploitation of AI. Parcel2Go is investing heavily in AI to transform how Operations runs - from automating customer demand and self-serve journeys, to AI-led forecasting, scheduling and intraday decisioning, to agent-assist, knowledge automation and AI-driven claims and courier exception handling. We expect this role to own that agenda inside Operations, set the pace, and hold the business honest on AI delivery and value capture.

Alongside the AI mandate, the successful candidate will own the management information, board reporting, commercial and operational analysis, budgeting, payroll calculation and resource planning disciplines that turn AI investment into measurable cost, service, margin and customer experience improvement.

Parcel2Go is seeking a commercially minded, AI-first Head of Performance Improvement, Operations to lead the AI transformation of our Operations function and own the management information, planning and analytical disciplines that turn it into measurable value. The role exists to make Parcel2Go Operations materially better, faster and cheaper through AI - and to give the Operations Director, the Board and the Executive a single, trusted view of performance, plans and the value being delivered.

Key Responsibilities:

• Lead the Performance Improvement Operations team to deliver an AI-led step change in the way Parcel2Go plans, measures, reports, automates and operates.
• Own and drive the Operations AI roadmap end to end.
• Define KPIs, drive data quality and make MI the daily heartbeat of the Operations function.
• Produce the Operations content for the monthly Board pack and Executive reviews.
• Lead deep-dive analysis on cost-to-serve, claims exposure, courier profitability, channel margin, contact reasons and lane-level economics.
• Own the Operations budget cycle including bottom-up build, scenario modelling, board submission, in-year tracking and variance commentary.
• Own accurate, on-time calculation of Operations payroll inputs.
• Lead the full resource planning cycle for Operations.

Essential Skills and Experience:

• Demonstrable experience deploying AI and automation in a customer operations or service environment.
• Strong commercial instinct for where AI creates real value.
• Proven track record leading a performance improvement, planning or analytics function.
• Strong commercial and analytical thinking.
• Experience owning operational MI, KPI design and management reporting at executive level.
• Experience of resource planning in a contact centre or operations setting.
• Budget ownership experience.
• Experience leading and developing high-performing teams.

Preferred Skills:

• Science or Engineering degree.
• Working knowledge of modern LLM-based architectures.
• Experience selecting, contracting and managing AI vendors and platforms.
• Experience embedding AI into forecasting, scheduling, routing or intraday decisioning.
• Lean, Six Sigma or systems thinking background.
• Experience of payroll calculation, controls and automation.
• SQL or equivalent data fluency.

Location: Greater Manchester / North West of England

Reports to: Operations Director

Core Measures of Success:

• AI value capture - cumulative £ benefit delivered through AI and automation initiatives.
• Pace of AI delivery - AI use cases shipped to production per quarter.
• Contact automation rate and self-serve adoption.
• Accuracy, timeliness and credibility of Operations MI and Board reporting.
• Delivery of Operations budget.
• Forecast accuracy and adherence; service level achievement.
• Payroll accuracy and on-time delivery.
• Customer satisfaction and Trustpilot score for Operations-owned journeys.