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Travel Group Minimizes Effort and Resources, Maximizes Insights and Flexibility
Technology Category
- Analytics & Modeling - Predictive Analytics
- Analytics & Modeling - Real Time Analytics
- Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Data Exchange & Integration
Applicable Industries
- Professional Service
- Software
Applicable Functions
- Business Operation
- Sales & Marketing
Use Cases
- Real-Time Location System (RTLS)
Services
- System Integration
- Data Science Services
- Training
The Challenge
FCTG faced challenges in pulling data together for a simple and user-friendly report to track daily sales and performance across the company. It would take up to three hours each morning to create this report, which the sales team used to influence and plan their daily targets. There was a need to improve efficiency and minimize any lost opportunities, and thus, it was necessary to develop an end-to-end solution that would be able to replace manual reporting, and allow 80 business users to receive daily reports at the click of a button. Prior to Sisense, the nSight brand didn’t exist and Flight Centre’s finance team was responsible for generating all of the company’s reports. As a part of the finance team for three years, Graeme proposed the idea to implement a BI solution, as he noticed analytics were getting more and more difficult with the company’s rapid expansion. He looked at three different BI software companies hoping for a solution that could automate daily reporting in a cost-effective way, be easily managed by people who may have little to no technical knowledge, and also allow business users to flexibly manipulate the data to immediately answer questions they had. Sisense checked all three boxes.
About The Customer
Flight Centre Travel Group (FCTG) is a global award-winning company with over 2,800 corporate, leisure, and wholesale businesses in 19 countries. With over 30 years of experience in delivering amazing travel experiences, FCTG is one of the world's largest travel agency groups. The company works closely with suppliers and tour operators to create amazing travel experiences as a one-stop, 24/7 travel provider. Growing into an $18-billion business, employing 19,000 people around the world, FCTG had a ton of data but a lack of substantive processes in place to extract meaningful insights. Graeme Davidson, Operations Leader for their nSight Data, Analytics, and Reporting brand, manages all of the company's data in Asia. He saw an opportunity to connect data sources and turned manual reporting, which took up to three hours to produce a simple report, into real-time reports and dashboards.
The Solution
Without having anyone in the business with data modeling experience, Graeme was able to create usable dashboards in a matter of weeks. In fact, over two years, Graeme was able to grow his BI skills in order to handle all of the data modeling for five regions. Sisense was able to connect easily and directly to Flight Centre’s SQL database, Salesforce, and Excel sheets and link them all together. This meant that the time-consuming, manual labor that was originally put into creating reports was completely removed, which allowed for more accurate reporting and a single source of truth. Graeme was able to transition Flight Centre’s static Excel sheets to an intuitive, user-friendly reporting platform. They now have the ability to drill down into specific clients, invoices, products, and partners, which gives their business leaders the ability to make educated business decisions and really, truly understand what is happening within their brand. Once Graeme and the rest of the Flight Centre team recognized the power of Sisense they realized how short-sighted their original goals had been. Most noticeably was the establishment of the nSight Brand in order to monetize their data and analytics, allowing a whole new vertical based on the comprehensive collection of data that was previously untapped.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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