FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
TravelCafé® more than a NetPlus® travel
agency system – a visionary solution
Travel Cafe Ltd., a company specialising in retail delivery systems
and based in Potters Bar, Herts, had a vision: to empower independent travel agencies with
a cutting edge system that would give them increased productivity and customer care.
Their retail concept involved creating a start-to-finish system
whereby a customer who went into a travel agency would use a touch screen to browse
through electronic brochures, makes a selection, checks availability and then converts it
into a booking.
To implement such a sophisticated system Travel Cafe needed an
information management system that would be able to handle the data, make searches and do
the conversion into a booking. Martin Russ, Travel Cafe’s Export Sales Director said:
“We soon noticed that the “nuts and bolts” of this concept was missing: a
software capable of managing the influx of information. We were not looking to reinvent
the wheel and spent some time evaluating what was available on the travel industry, but
when we could not find a system that offered a complete solution, we decided to
create our own.”
That’s when they evaluated a number of application
development tools including Delphi, Visual Basic and NetPlus. Martin continues: “We
were after a set of tools which would: 1) allow integration with others; 2) be
client/server and offer not only connectivity but also flexibility with SQL; 3) offer
durability and adaptability; 4) be intuitive; 5) allow development to be done in a modular
basis; 6) offer Wide Area Network (WAN) support. From the software we evaluated, NetPlus
was the only one that fulfilled all of these requirements.”
Travel Cafe also decided to contract Sapphire’s
consultancy services to help them develop this revolutionary travel agency management
system. A team of up to six people from both Sapphire and Travel Cafe worked together,
constantly obtaining input from numbers of travel agencies, to deliver a system fulfilling
the needs of not only small independents but those of major call centres.
TravelCafé contains
a high degree of functionality. “Our aim was to create a generic intuitive system
that would encompass all the needs of a travel agency so we ensured every single aspect of
the travel business was included. Being a modular system it has also allowed us to
continue developing it in response to our customers changing requirements and needs.”
The current system contains approximately 50 forms, multiple Reports generated by Crystal
Reports and uses SQL Anywhere as the main database engine.
The TravelCafé system is constantly
evolving and since its release in October 2000, a number of changes have been made: when
Sapphire released NetPlus 32 bit, Travel Cafe implemented the new enhancements into
TravelCafé alongside cosmetic improvements
and the addition of new Reports. Currently a new CRM (Customer Relationship Management)
area and diary function is being added to give agencies further control of customer’s
preferences and daily tasks.
According to Martin, TravelCafé has brought their original concept much closer to
reality and with their provision of hardware, set-up, support, and training, their
solution already meets their aim of bringing more power to the travel industry.
Travel Café’s success in the
travel world can be seen at Broadland Travel, one of the leading travel sites in the UK
with branches in North Walsham and Stalham, Norfolk, and one of Travel Café’s first
adopters. Nick Lee, Broadland’s
Director, comments “TravelCafé has
totally changed the way we do business by increasing productivity and giving us more
control over what we do”.
Having previously relied on a paper
system, Broadland were looking for a Windows system that would: 1) be fast and easy to
use, 2) have an on-going development/update plan, 3) deliver training, 4) deliver results,
5) be cost effective. Six of the most popular travel agency Systems were evaluated
including Kwik, LNS and TAD, but TravelCafé “Independent” was the one chosen by
Broadland. The fact that TravelCafé is also
delivered as a part of a total solution including hardware as well as set-up, support and
training helped Broadland with their decision.
Since its implementation in
September 2000, Broadland’s business has seen an enormous improvement. “I can
now get answers accurately in minutes as opposed to the couple of hours taken previously.
It has given me more control and increased the team’s productivity - before, when we used to get a phone call from a
client asking from which airport terminal he would fly from, it would mean a physical
check of his paper file and if this was in accounts or being used by someone else, it
meant phoning the customer back later with the answer. Now a quick check on the
customer’s record on TravelCafé takes
seconds, freeing up time for us to provide better customer care”, reported Nick.
With two separate branches,
Broadland opted to use a replication system to do an automatic overnight update of both
systems, where only the changes in the data are replicated. Later as Broadland expands
they might opt for sharing TravelCafé “Independent” via a WAN (Wide Area
Network).
TravelCafé is not an Accounts
system with the Travel Agency functions built on top like other systems available, it
really exceeds customers expectations”, finalises Nick Lee, “and I will
certainly recommend it to other agencies”.
The TravelCafé system is another example of the many different
vertical applications that have been developed using Sapphire’s NetPlus technology,
and as such, is also proving highly successful within its field.
For More Information Contact:
Travel Cafe Limited
12 The Service Road, Potters Bar, Herts., EN6 1QA
Tel: **(44) (0)1707 642426
FAX: **(44) (0)1707 647160
Internet:
info@travelcafe.org
