Unily and Flight Centre win best intranet in Nielsen Norman Awards 2019

Nielsen Norman Group has studied the rise and evolution of intranet platforms for more than two decades, focussing predominantly on user experience. This is the fifth time Unily has been recognized in the Nielson Norman Intranet Design awards, elevating the company’s winning record to 5 winning intranets over the last 6 years.

Flight Centre Travel Group, the world’s largest independent travel company specialising in tailor-made holidays and corporate travel, engaged Unily, the digital platform experts, in July 2017 to lead a re-design of its intranet, the first re-design in 15 years. PILOT, the name of Flight Centre Travel Group’s intranet platform, was successfully launched across the company in May 2018.

Unily and Flight Centre set out to accelerate productivity with a clear and consistent intranet design that made functionality accessible and easy to use and, most importantly, enabled the publication of timely and accurate communications. The intranet plays an integral role in ensuring that frontline staff have the information required to proactively exceed their customers’ needs and expectations, especially during times of travel disruption and emergency. As a result, the Unily intranet has significantly increased the company’s ability to provide the exceptional service on which it bases its success.

These goals were achieved by making use of Unily’s unique product feature set, including its unique and highly configurable design engine, Hendrix, which simplified PILOT’s development by giving Flight Centre maximum control over their design choices, especially in relation to its navigation, site functionality, content types and supplier directories.

Due to Unily’s easy-to-use Content Management System, content owners, publishers and business owners alike could for the first time – without the need for training or technical support – create and manage their own content, giving them more time to focus on the value and relevance of content created.

There are currently 1,900 users of PILOT, ranging from frontline sales staff, through to operations, finance, marketing and the leadership team. These users consist of corporate, retail and support staff, with information tailored to specific brands and users.

Since launch, PILOT has demonstrably improved Flight Centre Travel Group’s staff productivity, communications, culture and engagement, with impressive results since May 2018, including:

• Productivity: significantly improved how sales teams are now able to source and book customer holidays more easily than ever before, passing on benefits to customers.
• Communications: it has improved internal communications by reducing internal email traffic by 88%. Staff are now able to self-source information themselves, reducing reliance on head office.
• Culture: due to the design of PILOT, employees have access to information that allows them to engage and thrive within the business. This includes employee benefits and company policies.
• Engagement: since its launch, PILOT is consistently used by over 95% of staff each month, generating 1.25m content views, demonstrating the utility of its content.

Speaking about Flight Centre’s win, usability expert Jakob Nielsen, Principal at Nielsen Norman Group said: "Content accuracy and assembling everything employees need in one place are features emphasised in this pleasing design. PILOT pulls together a wealth of information, tools, and applications in a way that lifts Flight Centre employees to their full productivity potential."

Elyse Langenegger, Head of Internal Communications, Flight Centre Travel Group said: “We are incredibly excited to have won this award. PILOT was an incredible solution to develop and implement. The benefits are already being seen across the business with employees more engaged and excited about using PILOT. It has also been beneficial from an Internal Communications perspective, allowing us to regain control of organisational information and reduce the amount of unnecessary noise that employees were previously exposed to.”

Paul Jackson, Managing Directory, Unily UK added: “We are delighted to receive our fifth Nielsen Norman accolade in the last six years. This Flight Centre award demonstrates that Unily continues to produce leading intranet solutions for many of the world’s leading brands. We are at the forefront of delivering highly valuable intranets that answer the key challenges that many businesses face in the current climate, and we deliver highly engaging digital workplaces that help employees to become more productive.”

Nielsen Norman Group's Intranet Design Annual 2019: The Year’s 10 Best Intranets, co-authored by Kara Pernice and Patty Caya is available to download for $248 (group license $488) from the Nielsen Norman Group website at http://www.nngroup.com/reports/intranet-design-annual/.