Sure Travel, one of the largest travel providers in southern Africa, has made the travel booking process more accessible, efficient and affordable by implementing an e-procurement solution that simplifies the complexity of travel management, offering prospective travellers the best option for their corporate travel requirements.
The Sure On-Line Business system, developed and implemented by Microsoft technology and software application developer Business Connexion, allows the direct interaction of an online Internet booking engine with the globally available central reservation system (CRS), Galileo mainframe system. The technology combines the experience of the travel agent and the disciplines of "buy-side" e-procurement with the complexity of travel management to provide access to travel bookings 24 hours a day within the client`s intranet or over the Internet.
The solution provides enhanced reporting and cost management, corporate modelled approval flow, and the convenience of real-time (online) or manual (offline) travel booking mechanisms. In turn it allows the corporate to implement various travel profiles and policies for respective departments within the organisation, saving costs and reducing unnecessary travel expenses.
"Technology is paramount in the travel industry, and having the competitive-edge is all important," explains Mladen Lukic, director of Sure Tech, a subsidiary of the Sure Holding Group. "The e-procurement system enables us to provide an excellent service and puts us in a position not to merely offer but to guarantee our customers a good deal."
Travel e-procurement does not easily lend itself to the conventional rules of online purchasing. This was one of the challenges facing Sure Travel and Business Connexion when designing the system. In stark contrast to conventional e-procurement, you cannot order a seat on a flight, run an approval process and expect the seat to be available three days later unless you physically reserved the seat when placing the order and committed to the booking on receipt of approval.
To compound the complexity, the traveller must deliver him or herself to the travel supplier - the airport - rather than the online purchase being delivered to the purchaser`s door. This makes the corporate approval and escalation process far more time critical. With airlines, hotels and car hire companies constantly readjusting booking availability and time schedules, maintaining a static catalogue with current updates is virtually impossible as bookings have to be effected real-time and according to current availability.
The Sure On-Line Business system provides the architecture to manage and facilitate the process of corporate purchasing of travel, covering flights, car hire and hotel reservations, across the Internet. It enables prospective travellers to view online all availability and costs in the Galileo CRS marketplace.
If a booking is requested, the reservation system will tentatively book the seat, hotel or car hire and a customisable, time-critical approval process is initiated. The corporate travel agent simultaneously receives notification of the booking and is able to modify the booking should the traveller specify any special preferences for the travel. All changes are fed back to the e-procurement system and the requestor is updated.
Alternatively, the traveller can initiate an offline manual request, which is sent directly to the travel agent via a pipeline-type process. Once the agent makes the booking, the data is fed back from the Galileo CRS into the e-procurement system which updates or initiates the approval process according to the individual corporate requirements.
"The solution provides a range of equally important advantages from a corporate perspective," says Grant Healy, Western Cape regional director at Business Connexion. "Detailed travel expense reports can be generated at month-end, allowing the company to analyse how much was spent on travel according to cost-centre, traveller, principle provider or department. The system provides a comprehensive database accommodating all those involved in the booking process, and even caters for geographically dispersed companies with multiple departments and cost centres."
Built on Microsoft Windows DNA with the .NET Framework in mind for future advancement, the system is currently run on a Microsoft Windows 2000 server operating system with Internet Information Services 5.0. All data is stored in the server, which is accessed through stored procedures and a data object based on ADO.NET concepts.
In the application layer the system utilises active server pages (ASP) technology wrapped in a VB COM object to manage the Web site as well as the user connections to the Web interface. A Visual Basic application allows administration of the system to add or remove users, organisations and travel agencies. The business layer consists of various COM components that encapsulate the business logic, such as travel logic and workflow, and bridge the gap between the application layer and the data objects.
"The solution provides a host of process efficiencies for both the corporate and travel provider. From the corporate perspective the procurement lead-time and process is dramatically reduced, while the automated authorisations also help to improve process efficiency. From the travel provider`s perspective, process efficiency can be improved dramatically depending on the level of integration selected.
"Procurement control is immediately enhanced, and trends in the company`s travelling can be identified and mapped by management and used to negotiate discounts with relevant suppliers.
"While other travel companies have now joined the e-procurement game, we enjoyed the competitive advantage of being the first travel management company with the solution. Having had the head-start in the game, large corporates always associate Sure Travel with guaranteed cost-savings," Lukic concludes.
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