Talk is cheap at Flight Centre

Flight Centre in Brief

• Travel agency has 135 New Zealand stores
• Over 600 travel consultants out of total New Zealand staff of 900
• Is part of a Brisbane-based group with stores in nine countries
• Group's 2007 revenue was A$1.15 billion and after-tax-profit A$120.8 million
• New Zealand operation head-quartered in Auckland

"The phone represents a huge chunk of our business and you notice as soon as we have an outage that it immediately impacts our figures."
Simon Conroy, Flight Centre CIO

Flight Centre New Zealand Limited, the 135-store strong travel specialist, has packed its bags and is on the move. Not that it's going far - the firm is merely relocating its New Zealand head office from Emily Place in central Auckland to Vincent St, a journey of a couple of kilometres.

But Flight Centre is using the opportunity of a change of location to overhaul its telecommunications, installing a unified communications system in which voice and data share the same network. IBM® and Vodafone teamed up to provide a one-stop ICT solution for Flight Centre.

CIO Simon Conroy says the business, which has heavy reliance on telecommunications, is moving to Vodafone for voice and data services, with IBM handling the network infrastructure, call centre and unified communications architecture and installation. Head office is making the switch first, with the stores following.

Conroy says there are price benefits in choosing Vodafone as telecommunications service provider, but quite apart from the sharp pricing, the process of working out the design of Flight Centre's network was a pleasingly collaborative process, involving Vodafone, IBM and Flight Centre. "They sat us down and asked us how it was going to work best for us. They were agile and prepared to cater for our individual needs."

Using voice over IP technology, the new network will carry both voice and data traffic. But in the first phase, Vodafone and IBM won't be providing Flight Centre with any exotic new applications - there is enough to manage just putting the new network in place. In the near future, however, they'll be exploiting the opportunities unified communications technologies presents and have already made a substantial investment in key applications.

"Talks are going on about different applications and collaborations with Vodafone and IBM. [The network] definitely gives us access to stuff we didn't previously have," Conroy says. One such application is "presence", by which the system will automatically tell whether a Flight Centre consultant is at their desk by detecting if they're using their computer keyboard or mouse.

"We have a lot of communications between the stores and head office ... and if we can tell instantly whether someone is available without actually calling and leaving messages, it's going to be much more efficient." They can then use alternative communications tools like corporate-grade instant messaging.

In the short term, the new network opens the way for big cost savings. Voice calls will be handled by Cisco CallManager, which is also being installed at Flight Centre in Australia, where the company is based. With direct network links between the company's New Zealand and Australian operations, it will soon no longer be necessary to make a toll call from one to the other. The network will also enable the use of unified communications applications internationally.

"All the calls made Trans-Tasman, of which there are a lot considering how close our relationship is with head office, will effectively be free," Conroy says. Similarly, CallManager, which is being installed by IBM®, will place calls within New Zealand by the cheapest route.

All of that is expected to add up to about a 15 percent saving on Flight Centre's annual phone bill. But there are indirect benefits as well. One is that the new Vodafone and IBM ICT network will replace three existing phone systems from a number of different providers, thereby simplifying support.

And the new system will be inherently more reliable, which is crucial when a major proportion of Flight Centre's customer contact is over the phone. "Anecdotally we think about half our customers are walk-ins, about 25 per cent contact us through our website and about a quarter come through our 0800 number.

"So the phone represents a huge chunk of our business and you notice as soon as we have an outage that it immediately impacts our figures."

Key Business Insights

Consolidating communications on one technology platform with one service provider will bring about significant benefits.

Dealing with one telecommunications company for mobile, landline and data services presents opportunities for price discounts.

More than that, a unified communications platform that combines voice and data on one network can circumvent costly toll calls, since calls can be routed over direct network links between head and branch offices.

Unified communications applications layered over IP technology provided by IBM will potentially increase employee productivity at Flight Centre while providing staff with new business tools to foster collaboration.

The use of intelligent applications such as "presence", which automatically informs the phone system when a user on the network is away from their desk and unable to answer calls, corporate-grade instant messaging, web meeting and conference calling allow Flight Centre staff better access to key internal resources like travel subject matter experts for increased customer service, sales and cost reductions.

A further benefit of having a single service provider and network is simplification of support that will be provided by IBM.

Additional Resources

IBM makes abundant information on unified communications available on the web, including this:

www.ibm.com/services/us/index.wss/offerfamily/gn/a1000397

Wikipedia has a detailed description of Cisco CallManager's history and features:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CallManager

IDC says unified communications is catching on in the Asia-Pacific region, according to this sponsored report:

www.searchsmbasia.com/article.php?id_article=4205