Flight Centre's rapid journey to streamlined procurement

TTG's suppliers include hotels, cruise lines and other travel providers like touring companies. Its relationships with these suppliers can be complex and involve multiple contracts and rates globally.

TTG’s Global Procurement Network needed a single platform to manage these relationships and simplify the management of contracts. It also wanted to automate processes and streamline workflow.

“As a travel business we need to be agile in responding to a changing marketplace and the fragmented processes we had in the past in some instances were not aligned to that goal,” said Calvin Goulding, CIO of TTG. "Within TTG, we needed to standardise and streamline our processes and conducted an RFP for the best solution. Salesforce ticked all the right boxes and the rapid rollout within our particular area exceeded our expectations.”

The implementation was led by PwC, a Salesforce global strategic alliance partner, and it took only 12 weeks to roll out to pilot phase with 90 users globally. Full deployment was six weeks later to 320 users globally. This rapid timescale was made possible through an agile approach and Salesforce Accelerator sessions and templates. The templates helped TTG standardise workflow and adopt Salesforce with very little customisation.

Service Cloud has replaced disparate tools used by TTG’s Global Procurement Network to provide a 360 degree view of each supplier, including all of their contracts and past interactions with the network. The technology also automates workflow surrounding contracts and price negotiations. These processes are now managed as cases with set triggers to keep work flowing between internal teams and TTG’s suppliers.

Another process that’s been streamlined using Service Cloud is TTG’s annual rate review. In the past this generally involved procurement manually contacting each supplier to confirm rates for the year ahead. Now, there is a standard template for these emails and they can be sent automatically. Responses are tracked in Service Cloud and any requested changes trigger a case to be managed by procurement.

“We went from a very manual way of working in this particular area to having fully optimised processes which have then been systemised within the platform.  This has allowed us to digitise this part of our business which sets us up well for the future,” said Goulding.

The Global Procurement Network’s new streamlined workflow extends to processes like updating inventory and prices and will help to speed time to market.

Rameez Zubair, Technical Business Analyst at TTG, said, “Salesforce will help us better collaborate with our suppliers and be more proactive in our communication. I also believe through the alignment of Salesforce and our strategy we’ll be able to support the group’s journey to digitise its core, and further streamline the experience of employees.”