travel tech insights

This is a question every manager in the travel industry should be asking themselves, because the thought process behind a serious answer will jumpstart – or clarify – a reasoned foundation for a strategic role and direction for technology.  Technology spend is a critical part of doing business, however you should not spend crazy money on it but don’t fall far behind the competition either.

Speed. Accuracy. Scalability. These are the things on the minds of nearly every travel company in today’s global travel marketplace. Because the travel landscape is populated with so many major players, the prospect of administering back-office tasks and other repetitive, non-complex functions is a critical pain point for travel companies in creating sustainable growth, productivity, and profitability.

This is where a travel ERP solution is an important value proposition for travel companies in streamlining tasks and processes. The capacity of a travel ERP solution to automate workflows and back-office tasks, and fast, accurate invoicing and documentation reduce headaches by streamlining once manual, time-consuming activities and providing travel companies with greater visibility across each touch point of the value chain.

20 minutes may not sound like a lot of time. It’s a quick lunch or a long shower, but it doesn’t seem like enough time to worry about how efficiently it’s been spent. But multiply that 20 minutes five thousand times and you begin to see the way that best use of 20 minutes compounded over a month or a year can turn into real time and real money. If a small travel agency spends 20 minutes manually processing each of the 5,000 airline tickets it sells in a month, that 20 minute process takes up nearly 2,000 hours worth of work—the work of several employees.

Even in today’s increasingly digitized travel industry, this is still all too common of a scenario, especially for smaller travel agencies or travel companies. Yes, it’s true these tasks are important and a large part of a travel agency’s operations. Of course, tickets need to be processed—just as travel policies need to be enforced, invoices need to be managed, and 3rd party bookings need to be recorded. Just because these tasks are crucial, however, does not mean that they still need to be done by hand. Agencies utilizing a travel ERP solution ought to be able to automate these processes and many others, thereby saving time and money while freeing up employees to focus on providing value and completing more useful tasks.

For many customers, the look, feel, and vibe of a company’s branding can be just as influential in  whether they work with said company as the products and services themselves. As such, it’s important for these companies - especially companies within the travel industry, many of which use brand management and image as a chief selling point - to ensure their brand is uniform and cohesive across a number of different platforms, including offers, vouchers, receipts, and other forms of documentation.

But the problem for many travel agencies and travel management companies is that many booking engines and other ERP systems lack the capacity for those within the company to manage their document templates. These templates often times have to be adjusted, modified, or managed by external developers, which is costly, time-consuming, and inefficient, especially when it comes to creating specifically tailored documents for a number of different applications.

The back office. It’s a curious space - akin to a No Man’s Land - within the travel industry that doesn’t receive much play or attention either from travel companies or those operating within the tourism sector. In today’s world, an interesting dichotomy of focus has developed within the travel industry as to how travel companies direct their resources: Customer-facing activities such as managing customer relations via social media, or optimizing the services and products offered by deploying software solutions in conjunction with suppliers or distributors.

The back office, however, where a majority of a travel company’s operational activities such as invoicing, procurement, and payroll are housed, is often overlooked by travel companies as they work to remain competitive and profitable in the aforementioned customer-facing arenas.