What's inside TINA?

These are the main features of our ERP system, TINA:

1. Management of customers

This feature of TINA includes: all types of customers (resellers, corporate, individuals), general details, fiscal details (validation of content according to local fiscal rules), management of offices, customer profile management (service fee and discount, management of contracts, CRM data, documents profiles, etc.), statistics, credit limits, deposits, management of duplicated accounts, frequent buyer cards managements etc.

2. Management of suppliers

This feature of our ERP system includes: general details, fiscal details, product names, prices from the contract (requires the SPM module - see the next section), invoicing profiles, commission management, CRM data etc.

3. Management of requests and sales

This feature of TINA includes: input of all requests (no matter the channel: manual, phone, email, Corporate Extranet, Website, 3^rd party software etc.), processing of the requests according to the travel agency approved workflows and procedures as well, by automatically applying profile data and quality control protocols, parallel multiple searches inside 3^rd party systems (supplier systems), searching inside own inventory etc.

4. Management of travel documents

Using the document template manager, provided by our ERP system, the user has the possibility to generate whatever travel document he needs in a wide variety of formats: pdf, doc, docx, xls, rtf, html etc. Some examples of the most commonly used documents are: vouchers, client offers, supplier requests, travel contracts, order forms etc.

5. Management of fiscal documents

TINA is able to manage the full range of fiscal documents used by a travel agency: client invoices, client payments, supplier invoices, supplier payments, settlements between client and supplier invoices.
Taking advantage again of the Document Template Manager means that the look and output format of the fiscal documents that are being generated from TINA can be completely customized.

In addition, for supplier fiscal documents as well as for fiscal documents originated from the accounting software, import capabilities are available (which makes working inside TINA extremely easy and efficient). Automated settlement between client and supplier invoices means that the process which identifies the real income is done in an automated manner which saves a lot of time for the travel agents and/or accounting personnel in parallel with the elimination of human errors. All the fiscal documents can be exported and imported to and from virtually any accounting software.

Note: Some other specific fiscal documents might be available in certain markets according to local legal and fiscal rules.

6. Documents template manager or DTM

This feature of TINA allows the user to completely customize the look and feel of the documents generated by TINA as well as to change the output format. The interface is very intuitive and easy to use (wysiwyg). If you have ever used a document editing software it means you know how to use the DTM.

7. Management of report templates

The data stored inside TINA’s database is the property of the travel agency that represents a very valuable asset (CRM data, operational data, fiscal performance, employee performance etc.). This is the main reason why we believe that a good ERP system should provide access to all of this data and, in addition, to be able to present in a wide variety of formats in order to allow all the persons interested to understand it and take informed decision which mean the difference from failure to success.

This level of awareness can be achieved inside TINA mainly due to a very strong reporting engine which allows the extraction of any kind of data in a variety of formats.

8. Exporting and importing to and from accounting software

TINA includes in its default configuration an import/export mechanism for integration with pure accounting software. This mechanism makes use of the latest web service technologies available and at the same time is compatible with older accounting software that is not able to communicate in this manner. All the fiscal data used by a travel agency can be exported or imported. In addition, the travel agency may choose to add specific fiscal data, like the grand charter of accounts, VAT journals etc.

9. 3^rd party software connection via web service

When we designed our ERP software, we knew that efficiency for a travel agent means that he is able to process more requests in the same amount of time while respecting the procedures and the quality standards setup by the travel agency. One very effective way to achieve this is to create connections from TINA to the supplier systems. This is achieved by using the 3^rd party software connection web service powered by our ERP system software.
In this way, the agent is able to launch multiple parallel searches from TINA into the suppliers systems, receive price quotation, create bookings and import all the data inside TINA in order to use it.

As a very simple example we may consider the following scenario: the agent has to present the customer with 3 price offers in a given amount of time (according to the existing SLA) and the travel agency has 10 major wholesaler hotel suppliers.

a. Without this mechanism of TINA: the agent needs to open several supplier systems and make searches in order to get a price quotation. Each time he needs to input the search data (passenger number, destination, check-in, check-out etc.). He needs to be trained in using each of the suppliers systems. He needs to write down the offers and create an email to the customer with 3 price offers. We can easily make the following calculus: 1 request, around 5 items to input as search criteria, multiplied with 10 systems plus copy/paste price offers at least 3 times. Once the offer is confirmed, the travel agent needs to input again the data inside the invoicing system in order to register his work and issue travel and fiscal documents. Once the supplier invoice becomes available, someone inside the travel agency needs to input it, locate the initial request and create a settlement between client invoice and the supplier invoice in order to determine the actual profit.

b. With this mechanism of TINA: the agent inputs the request inside TINA only once. He initiates a parallel search in all 10 supplier systems, combines the results and sends an email just by clicking one button. Once one of the price offers is confirmed he makes a firm booking inside TINA and imports it. No need to input the data again. The agent issues all the travel and fiscal documents. Once the supplier invoice becomes available it is automatically imported inside TINA and the settlement is automatically performed. We can easily make the following calculus: 1 request, around 5 items to input as search criteria, one click for offer sending, one click for booking confirmation and one click for each document that needs to be generated. The rest of the process is automatic.
We can easily notice that by using the 3^rd party software connection mechanism, the number of actions to be performed can be reduced as much as ten times (following the above scenario), the time needed to perform the operations is substantially shorter and the amount of data available for reports is substantially higher.

10. Additional features

Corporate Extranet, Sales Force Automation, Agenda and Calendar, Alerts, E-mail communication of all documents and many more.