Industries
Travel
Travel is a growing business sector, and the continual year-on-year increase in passenger numbers has meant that many organisations have had to re-assess the effectiveness of their business processes and IT systems. In an industry that relies heavily on older technologies, the biggest challenge is to get those technologies to fit into a more dynamic and real-time business model and to access the wealth of information in those systems for reporting and analysis with the aim of driving business growth and improvement, and ultimately gaining competitive advantage. Unfortunately, this is a challenge that all too often cannot be met.
Moore Stephens Consulting has worked with a number of travel companies to provide them with leading edge technology solutions that provide robust and configurable support for their business processes, and more importantly enables their businesses to grow without hindering that growth. By taking a fresh look at the business, understanding that is required to support the current business model and through developing a joint vision of where the flexibility of a bespoke solution can enable un-hindered future growth, Moore Stephens Consulting has a proven track record of success in the travel sector. Our solutions have had a direct, positive impact on the operations of our travel clients, and the added value that we provide by embedding reporting and analytics into our solutions means that, more than ever, our travel clients can understand their current business performance and plan for the future in this highly competitive market.
Some examples of the bespoke solutions that we have developed for our travel sector clients include:
- a reservations system for a niche cruise tour operator;
- data warehouse and reporting solution for an internet-based travel agency;
- web-based car booking components for a car hire company;
- definition of an accounting systems integration strategy for a global tour operator;
- Integration of a reservations system with the flight and cruise components of a leading Global Distribution System.
Project Examples
Niche Cruise Tour Operator
The challenge - to provide a flexible and robust reservations system utilising leading edge technologies to facilitate the corporate goals of reducing booking times, improving customer service and flexibility to aid future growth, including integrating additional routes to market.
The solution - by focusing at the outset on the basic business fundamentals, and then building the corporate goals and vision upon that model, a detailed specification was developed for a bespoke reservations system. This system would enable the client to support the existing business model and provide the flexibility to support the future business plans. The development, utilising the latest Microsoft .NET technologies, was based on a Smart Client n-tier architecture and the reservations system was designed to interface with a number of external systems (in many cases using a web-service architecture) such as credit card processing, an inventory management system, a Global Distribution System for flight availability, and in a subsequent phase the same GDS was used to provide an additional route to market for cabin booking by external travel agents.
Benefits - the benefits to the client have been immense, and the impact on business performance has been easily measurable. Some of the key benefits included more user friendliness, a significantly faster booking process, an improved customer experience, higher quality documentation and integrated reporting and analytics to provide a view of key performance indicators to help drive the business. In terms of statistics, the reservations system saved 175 salesperson days in the first year of operation, reduced the booking resources required whilst increasing the booking throughput and reduced the group booking time from an average of 45 minutes to an average of 10 minutes. From a management perspective, whereas previously four or five reports and time consuming number crunching in spreadsheets was required to review business performance, it can now all be done in real-time, and access to performance information and the facility to undertake drill-down analytics is immediate.
"The scalability of the new solution enables us to implement new initiatives and grow the business without redesigning architecture. This is precisely the flexibility we need”.
Finance & IT Director, Niche Cruise Operator