Global Travel Company Succeeds Through First-Class Digital Transformation
This global travel services company sought digital transformations to improve user experience and enable remote work from anywhere on any device.
The company partnered with NTT DATA to deliver innovative, automated persona-based end-user support using a new ITSM platform as well as a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI). This allowed it to significantly improve user experience and reduce costs while increasing agility. This strategy proved invaluable during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Business Needs
The travel industry has undergone a massive revolution in the last twenty years, becoming a digital business that provides travelers with many avenues to fill their needs for connection, adventure and inspiration. Adapting to that revolution through continuous digital transformation implemented in collaboration with NTT DATA, this global travel services company focuses on delivering exceptional service to its 20 million customers through travel agencies, online portals, a mobile app and contact center.
Outcomes
- Enables remote work for nearly 1,000 employees
- Migrates 5,000 units across 350 sites to VDI in 12 months
- Increases end-user experience scores above 94%
- Delivers business agility through BYOD
- Saves 28% in IT spend within the first three years
- Creates nearshore Center of Excellence for workplace technology services while maintaining global support as required
- Introduces new technologies and automation to promote self-service and self-heal capabilities
- Establishes persona-based service desk support model, supported by new channels such as chat and tech bar
- Improves end-user satisfaction of support chat by 74%
Solution
On the road to personalization
The company began its digital transformation journey with NTT DATA in 2018. Together, they mapped out a plan to utilize a range of NTT DATA’s Dynamic Workplace services.
A big piece of the transformation centered around matching unique employee needs with the right type and level of support. To better understand the company’s end-user needs, NTT DATA spent time with employees across the travel company’s retail stores, call centers, airports, hangar facilities and headquarters, meeting with stakeholders in every department. One key discovery surfaced: the company’s diverse user groups had faced unique barriers when seeking support.
The company and NTT DATA determined that the most effective solution would be a persona-based support model tailored to each user group. For example, retail staff often dropped support calls to the service desk in order to help onsite customers, so NTT DATA implemented a chat channel to the service desk allowing retail staff to keep support channels open while simultaneously serving customers. Pilots have limited time on the ground, so NTT DATA created a hotline to a higher level of support for immediate resolution. Adopting a persona-based support model increased staff productivity and, in turn, delivered improved customer service.
A virtual voyage: improved desktops and services
To further enhance the flexibility for end users and enable them to work anywhere, anytime, on any device, the company and NTT DATA focused on another game-changing transformation. Eighty percent of the company’s computers operated on legacy applications and hardware running on Windows 7—replacing them would be an enormous expense. Instead, the company extended the life of those assets by implementing NTT DATA’s Virtual Desktop Infrastructure services, significantly improving user experience and productivity on those legacy devices. VDI also created next-generation workplace capabilities: the flexibility to access their applications anytime, from anywhere, on any device.
Implementing a VDI solution provided additional benefits including:
- Proactive device monitoring that detects failures before they happen and improves continuity
- Better application performance, security and collaboration by upgrading legacy hardware to Windows 10 and Microsoft 365 with Microsoft Teams
- Extends technical currency with reduced software licensing, power and premises costs
- Reduces IT spend by 28% within the first 3 years of VDI implementation
Driving past disruption
What happens when the world shuts down during a global pandemic? In this company’s case, the COVID-19 pandemic meant retail stores closed, hotels suspended operations, planes were grounded, and cruises were cancelled. At a time when thousands of customers needed refunds, the company’s call centers had to close.
Fortunately, having the right technology in place meant the company could pivot quickly in response to the pandemic and operate with greater resilience and agility. The VDI solution allowed the company to move legacy office-based roles to remote work to maintain productivity. While there were significant technical challenges to overcome, the VDI building blocks the company had already put in place with NTT DATA enabled the IT team to virtualize a dozen apps and get employees set up to work remotely in a week and a half.
Cruising to a new altitude of flexibility and efficiency
Journey. Explore. Discover. Repeat. That’s the dream this travel services company delivers, and NTT DATA’s Dynamic Workplace services and Virtual Desktop Infrastructure give it the tools and agility to do that. As the travel industry anticipates a spike in demand once travelers are safe to move around the globe again, the company’s workplace transformations make it easy for it to scale its business in alignment with customer demand.
The foundations also enable the next wave of digital transformations to begin, focusing on continuous improvement, automation and customer service innovation—transformations that couple the vision of this travel services company to continuously evolve in collaboration with NTT DATA as a trusted global innovator.
About Global Travel Company
A leading global travel services company reimagines its infrastructure and services model to best serve employees and customers.