AN EVENTFUL YEAR FOR THE SOTC IT TEAM — NEW BUSINESS APPLICATIONS
The year gone by has been an exciting one indeed for the IT team, which notched up a series of achievements.
On the Leisure Travel front, the obsolescent FRAME system @SOTC was phased out and replaced with a home-grown application, which was christened FRAME 2.0. The new system was ably integrated with CRM as the front end. As part of the roll out, the accounting processes with regard to SAP were standardized. The FRAME 2.0 runs on the same engine as LTOB of Thomas Cook, and the common platform is envisaged to bring in harmonization of processes across the two organizations.
On the anvil are plans to replace FORCE, the accounting system for MICE @SOTC; and rolling out a new FIT product Travpax @TCIL. Continuing the journey, there are plans to equip the B2C Sales team with an iPad-based app, and thereafter the Customer App, across both organizations. The Tour Managers’ App is also being enhanced.
As regards Business Travel, the company signed up with Sabre for another three years. Over 15 products/solutions are being introduced including Robotics, which will bring tremendous benefits to the business. Corporate Travel @TCIL is on the verge of adapting a new version iBook v2, followed by SOTC also migrating to the same from Q2-2017. On the SBT front, both C2B and SONIC are being standardized to have a similar process flow and features.
All applications are getting ready for the impending GST roll out and will be fully compliant.
THOMAS COOK IT ADVANCEMENTS — DASHBOARDS
Over a period of time, there has been an increasing need for consolidated reports which allow real-time mapping and analysis. The IT team at Thomas Cook took up this challenge head-on, and has developed dashboards which not only allow collation of the entire TC data but also provide various analyses at a glance. The data inputs for these dashboards includes both manual excel sheets as well as the SAP (system); thus the entire data is fed into the system resulting in real reports being generated. The first dashboard was developed for Forex early last year and has now progressed to over 14 dashboards for major businesses such as Airline performances, Corporate Travel, E-Business, Leisure Travel, Insurance , COL and Visas etc. The dashboard provides an overview of the business with details such as outstanding, budgets, targets, shortfalls etc. thus enabling various businesses to understand the day-to-day affairs and accordingly plan.
Additionally, with in-depth analysis, one is able to view the changing trends of the field.
Increasingly with these dashboards, the team has worked on commercial, financial, operational as well as risk management reports.