As one of the world’s largest travel retailers — with operations spanning 24 countries, and ambitions of reaching 50 countries by 2035 — Flight Centre Travel Group (FCTG) needs technology that can help its people work faster and more efficiently, especially as it continues to grow.
But for Nick Williams, the company’s Head of Digital Workplace in the Americas, limited technical resources and the mounting pressure to do more with less were making it more difficult for the team to hit its performance targets.
Williams and his team were responsible for onboarding corporate clients and delivering the responsive service those clients expect when managing time-sensitive travel needs. But they were facing two critical problems: First, the onboarding process was painfully slow, taking more than 30 days to get new corporate clients up and running. Second, when urgent situations arose, his largely non-technical team didn’t have a quick way to build solutions that would address the issues.
Building for scale without breaking the budget
Williams was the only one on his small Flight Centre team with a developer background. But he and his team were responsible for critical processes that touched everything from onboarding new customers to managing crisis responses.
A more conventional approach to improving the company’s customer experience would have required hiring multiple developers, navigating long development cycles, and creating custom code that could become a maintenance nightmare. Williams was eager to avoid all that unnecessary complexity.
“It really started with the mindset that we wanted to do more with less, and scale the business using technology rather than just adding headcount,” Williams explains.
The demands of customer service in the travel industry also raised the stakes. Competition is fierce, and customer expectations are high. When a flight is canceled or a natural disaster disrupts an itinerary, for example, customers need answers immediately.
Williams needed a way to create “rapid reaction” apps that could be deployed in days. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the team had to quickly build workflows for processing refunds and sending crisis alerts to customers. They knew these weren’t one-time needs and wanted a solution that would allow them to build apps easily and flexibly in the future.
To achieve these goals without expanding the team or draining internal resources, Williams needed a platform that could rapidly automate and scale Flight Centre’s most critical processes.
A trusted platform is an easy choice
Williams didn’t need to be sold on Nintex Automation K2 — he knew it inside and out. By the time he joined Flight Centre in 2018, he already knew K2 could handle exactly the challenges his team was facing.
“I first started using K2 around 2008,” Williams says. “At the time, I was reluctant to try it because I liked writing all the code myself. But once I started playing around with it, it began to feel like an extension of software development — like having an extra developer on the team.”
Williams’ familiarity with K2 proved invaluable when COVID-19 hit. Flight Centre needed to help customers navigate travel disruptions on an unprecedented scale — creating refund workflows, managing credit note inquiries, and deploying crisis alert systems while their call centers were overwhelmed.
K2’s easy-to-use interface allowed the team to build these solutions in days, not months.
“Drag-and-drop tools allow you to act quickly,” Williams says. “And because these platforms have governance features built in — like integration with Okta and MFA support — you don’t need to build those features from scratch.”
But the enduring power of K2 at Flight Centre goes far beyond crisis management. The platform became the backbone for three core functions that transformed how the team operates:
- Streamlining customer onboarding: By connecting Salesforce with multiple booking and mid-office systems, K2 turned what used to be a maze of emails and manual handoffs into a transparent, trackable workflow.
- Empowering non-technical team members: The platform enabled Flight Centre to build and maintain sophisticated automations without writing code.
- Creating rapid-response solutions: Whether facing a pandemic, a natural disaster, or another time-sensitive situation, Williams’ team could create new workflows quickly and iterate as their needs evolved.
“Once people understand that K2 brings visibility to processes that are otherwise hidden — like onboarding — they immediately see the value,” says Williams. “With tools like K2, you get task management, transparency, and reporting out of the box. That allows us to make quicker decisions that provide better service to our customers.”
Results that speak for themselves
Thanks to K2’s workflow automation capabilities, Williams’ team has achieved transformations that would have seemed impossible with traditional development approaches:
Onboarding time cut by more than 80%
With K2 orchestrating the entire process, what used to take 30+ days now takes only five to seven.
“We’re leveraging a partnership with Anthropic to use Claude for our AI capabilities,” Williams explains. “The plan is to send a prompt to Claude, ground it with our internal knowledge repository — basically the same training material we gave to the offshore team — and let the AI make the decision.”
Three developers’ worth of work — without hiring three developers
When asked how many developers he’d need to accomplish the same work without K2, Williams’ answer was striking: “I’d probably need at least three more full-time developers to do what we’re currently doing.”
With Nintex’s K2, Williams didn’t need to hire a single person. His non-technical team members understand logic and business processes, and K2 gives them the tools to apply that thinking without writing code.
“It’s about augmenting what you do and moving faster,” Williams says. “Which goes in line with everything I’ve been preaching about automation.”
The cost savings go beyond salaries. Those hypothetical developers would need specific technical expertise, ongoing training, and time to understand Flight Centre’s complex systems. Instead, Williams’ team can use K2 to build apps and workflows that directly serve their operational needs.
Rapid response when it matters the most
During the height of COVID-19, K2 enabled the team to build and deploy new solutions in days.
“We could spin up apps quickly, relieve pressure on phone support, and deal with the flood of refund requests in an organized way,” Williams says.
These capabilities have continued to benefit Flight Centre and its customers beyond the pandemic. The team is equipped to respond to unexpected crises or problems with an agility that would be impossible with traditional development cycles.
Looking ahead
Williams and his team aren’t resting on what they’ve already accomplished. The team is piloting a self-onboarding portal where customers can select products and input their own information, which then flows directly into Salesforce and triggers automations in K2.
With K2, Williams’ team at Flight Centre can now focus on innovation and improvement, instead of reinventing the wheel with every operational challenge.
Ready to empower your team to do more with less? Request a demo to see how Nintex can transform your operations.
