Cross-functional collaboration is part of Rocket Travel by Agoda's DNA. Many roles within the company require regular interaction with other departments, whether to develop new products, support existing partnerships, strategize for new partners, or solve an issue.

The Business Operations team is the perfect example of how cross-collaboration unfolds within the organization daily. These experts utilize data to help other departments find the answers they seek while uncovering strategic ways to support our partners and the business growth. Whether sharing a story through data or empowering different stakeholders to build the necessary skills to manipulate our data, our Business Operations team is critical to the success of Rocket Travel by Agoda and our partners.

The Business Operations team at Rocket Travel by Agoda has a clear-cut mission: tell stories of customers, partners, and team members through data. Therefore, storytelling is an integral part of our business. For example, showing that a specific metric is up or down week over week is not a story. However, digging deeper to understand what caused the variation and finding actionable insights is the story we strive to tell. For the team, success in storytelling means combining science and art equally—it's a science because it requires understanding complex data sets; it's art because there is an element of reading between the lines and conveying the message through compelling storytelling.

In 2020, when COVID-19 hit the United States, the Business Operations team played an essential role in supporting our partners. At that time, everything was new and unpredictable. By leveraging our travel expertise, the team built an analysis based on hotel cancellation trends by region and tied it back to the market-level supply. One of our airline partners leveraged the market analysis provided by the Business Operations team to understand what flights were likely to take off full or empty on the day of departure, based on the number of waivers our customer service team was granting for hotel bookings. In other words, if a region had a high cancellation rate and less supply inventory, it was likely that a lockdown was starting. By leveraging the team’s travel expertise and tying our hotel data to the airline data, Rocket Travel by Agoda helped our partner navigate the initial few months of the COVID pandemic with greater confidence.

Different partners measure success differently, meaning defining clear objectives before proposing a new solution is crucial. Once we understand how a partner wants to enhance their business, the Business Operations team works closely with the partner manager to dive deep into the problem and find a solution. This customized approach at a region, industry, or even partner level allows us to confidently propose a strategy with higher chances of meeting our partners' expected outcomes.

Similarly, the Business Operations team at Rocket Travel by Agoda works closely with other departments, such as finance and our in-house marketing team, to enable the respective team members to find the answers they are looking for. Whether supporting our financial analysts in reconciling business transactions or by analyzing data trends to support marketing initiatives, Business Operations plays a crucial role within the organization. As a partner-centric company, we provide multiple marketing services tailored to our partners' needs. Understanding the performance of our marketing initiatives is essential to ensure that we meet our and our partner's business expectations.

As a tech organization providing expertise in the travel loyalty space, understanding data and having the ability to transform it into a story is vital to our continuous growth. The Business Operations team at Rocket Travel by Agoda plays a critical role in supporting the organization and our partners to make data-driven decisions that continue to drive our business forward.