£135M in new business.
Won through a pandemic
How Manchester travel-management firm Clarity used Digital Hive to accelerate its digital transformation - moving 400+ staff and every customer to self-service analytics, and coming out of COVID stronger than it went in
Thriving, not just surviving
When COVID battered the travel sector, Clarity leaned into Digital Hive instead of pulling back. It moved customers and staff to self-service analytics, automated its finance reporting, and shipped innovative ESG travel metrics-turning a survival project into a growth engine that now touches every team in the company
Based in Manchester, Clarity is a multi-award-winning corporate travel management company whose mission is to help businesses track, control and manage travel spend. Its ClarityInsights family of solutions-part of it built on Digital Hive-helps clients manage everything from air, rail, hotel and events to visas and traveler support, all in one place
The greatest threat in a century of trading
A company built to weather good times and bad met a downturn unlike any before it-and had to keep clients close while costs came down hard
A sector in free fall
COVID grounded business travel almost overnight. For a travel-management firm, it was an existential test of how fast the business could adapt
Costs down, analysts furloughed
Streamlining meant putting many MI analysts onto furlough-just as customers needed answers faster than ever before
Clients needed self-service, now
Customers had to see refund and cancellation status instantly and cut their own costs - without waiting on a manual report
ClarityInsights: one portal over every analytics tool
Digital Hive sits above Clarity's existing BI stack-unifying Cognos, Microsoft Reporting Services, Qlik Sense and ThoughtSpot into one personalized, governed portal. Nothing migrated. Nothing rebuilt
Personalized views of every data asset
Business users and customers get tailored access to the reports and dashboards that matter to them - across multiple BI tools, in one place
Ask in plain language. Get instant answers
Digital Hive serves ThoughtSpot's search-driven analytics on tap - so users explore live, interactive pinboards and real-time data using natural language
A purpose-built view for every team
Highly customized gameboards give specialist teams-Finance, Marketing, Commercial-exactly the analytics they need and nothing they don't
Design and build at the same time
Fast low-code development lets Clarity model, create and change a personalized client portal quickly-cutting cost and effort dramatically
A pivot, made at pandemic speed
What had always been a vision-ClarityInsights running end-to-end across the whole organization - COVID turned into a deadline. Digital Hive's low-code speed made it achievable
Unify the BI stack
Wire Cognos, MS Reporting Services, Qlik Sense and ThoughtSpot into one ClarityInsights portal-federated, governed, personalized
Ship survival views fast
At the start of the pandemic, instantly create special views for refund and cancellation status-exactly when customers needed them
Build out finance efficiency
Add reporting content and use cases for the Finance team to examine efficiency and increase automation across the business
Run it end-to-end
Roll ClarityInsights right through the organization - sales, commercial, account management, bid, marketing, events - and out to every customer
The business, before and after the pivot
Same data. Same team. A very different operating model
Before the acceleration
- MI analysts produced reports by hand for clients and internal teams
- Customers waited on manual reports to see refund and cancellation status
- Analytics lived in separate tools-Cognos, Qlik, MS Reporting-siloed
- No natural-language way to explore data without an analyst's help
- Carbon and ESG reporting was limited and hard to surface
- The "end-to-end" vision for analytics remained just that-a vision
With Digital Hive
- Customers and staff self-serve analytics on tap - no analyst bottleneck
- Instant refund and cancellation views, built the moment they were needed
- One portal over every ABI tool, with personalized views per team
- Natural-language search via ThoughtSpot-ask a question, get an answer
- On-screen carbon-offset metrics help clients meet ESG commitments
- ClarityInsights now runs end-to-end-touching every area of the business
Growth, won in the hardest market in living memory
Measured in new business won and retained clients kept, as reported by Clarity, and a platform the team calls directly responsible for the bids they win
As ClarityInsights is such a big component part of what we give our customers, we could say that it's directly responsible for every bid that we win
The capabilities behind the growth
Six Digital Hive capabilities power ClarityInsights - and let Clarity adapt faster than the market around it
One door to every BI tool
A single, branded portal over Cognos, Qlik, MS Reporting and more - with personalized views by user and team
Natural-language answers
ThoughtSpot's search analytics delivered on tap-explore, analyze and share real-time data by simply asking
A view shaped to each team
Specialist gameboards for Finance, Marketing and Commercial put the right analytics in front of the right people
Model, create, change-fast
Design and build at the same time, cutting the cost and effort of standing up a personalized client portal
Carbon-offset, on screen
Customers compare travel modes, see CO₂ output and trees-to-offset, and meet board-mandated ESG commitments
One identity, every tool
Customers and staff reach the whole analytics estate through one secure, governed sign-on
If you saw your environment in this story, let's talk
Fragmented tools, reports no one can find, users who gave up asking - these aren't edge cases. Tell us what you're dealing with and we'll show you how it looks resolved, using the BI tools you already have