Global travel company succeeds through first-class digital transformation
As part of its digital transformation journey, a leading global travel services company sought to improve its employee experience and enable remote work from anywhere on any device — while delivering exceptional service to its 20 million customers.
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 approach significantly improved the employee experience and reduced costs while increasing agility. And a nearshore Center of Excellence for workplace technology services helped maintain global support.
Business Needs
The travel industry has undergone a massive revolution in the last 20 years. It’s now a digital business that provides travelers with many avenues to fulfill 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 focused on delivering exceptional service to its 20 million customers through travel agencies, online portals, a mobile app and a contact center.
Building on a partnership that began in 2018, the team’s first identified unique employee needs and their many support options. One key discovery surfaced: the company’s diverse user groups faced unique barriers when seeking support, and the most effective solution was a persona-based support model.
Outcomes
- Migrates 5,000 units across 350 sites to VDI in 12 months
- Increases end-user experience scores above 94%
- Creates nearshore Center of Excellence for workplace technology services while maintaining global support as required
- Establishes persona-based service desk support model, supported by new channels including a chat and tech bar
Journey. Explore. Discover. Repeat. That’s the dream this travel services company delivers. NTT DATA’s Digital Workplace Services and Virtual Desktop Infrastructure provide the tools and agility to do that.
Solution
On the road to personalization
The company began its digital transformation journey with NTT DATA in 2018, the travel company mapped out a plan to use a range of NTT DATA’s Digital Workplace Services.
The next step? Persona-based support.
For example, retail staff often drop support calls to the service desk to help onsite customers, so teams implemented a chat channel to the service desk, allowing retail staff to keep support channels open while serving customers. For airline pilots who have limited time on the ground, a hotline to a higher level of support offered immediate resolution.
A virtual voyage: improved desktops and services
To enhance end-user flexibility and enable work from anywhere, anytime, on any device, teams focused on another game-changing transformation. Of the travel company’s computers, 80% operated on legacy applications and hardware running on Windows 7. Replacing them would be an enormous expense.
Instead, the company extended the life of these assets with NTT DATA’s Virtual Workspace Services. This implementation significantly improved user experience and productivity on legacy devices. VDI also provided next-generation workplace capabilities. These include the flexibility to access applications anytime, from anywhere, on any device.
Implementing a VDI solution provided additional benefits, including:
- Detection of failures before they happen through proactive device monitoring, which improves continuity
- Improved application performance, security and collaboration by upgrading legacy hardware to Windows 10 and Microsoft 365 with Microsoft Teams
- Reducing software licensing, power and premises costs, which extends technical currency
- Reducing 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, COVID-19 meant closed retail stores, suspended hotel operations, grounded planes and canceled cruises. At a time when thousands of customers needed refunds, the company’s call centers had to close.
Fortunately, the company had the right technology in place and pivoted quickly in response to the pandemic, operating with greater resilience and agility. The company’s VDI solution moved legacy office-based roles to remote work to maintain productivity. Because the VDI building blocks were already in place, the company overcame significant technical challenges, because the IT team virtualized a dozen apps and set up employees to work remotely in a week and a half.
Cruising to new flexibility and efficiency
Journey. Explore. Discover. Repeat. That’s the dream this travel services company delivers. NTT DATA’s Digital Workplace Services and Virtual Desktop Infrastructure provide the tools and agility to do that. As travelers move around the globe again, the company’s workplace transformations make it easy to scale and align its business with customer demand.
The foundations also support the company’s next wave of digital transformations: Focusing on continuous improvement, automation and customer service innovation. These transformations pair the vision of this travel services company to evolve continuously in collaboration with NTT DATA as a trusted global innovator.
About this case study
A global travel services company focused on delivering exceptional service by reimagining its infrastructure and services model and transforming the customer and employee experience.