Trending: New Central Reservation Systems (CRS) are driving better customer experiences and more profitable and efficient operations, Clare Watson

Travel businesses are always looking for new ways to automate their processes and improve their efficiency, and it seems despite the impact of Covid, businesses continue to look at ways to invest that will improve their future profitability and performance.

We have spoken to several companies over the last couple of months who are embarking on a huge digital transformation to introduce a new Central Reservation System into their business.

Travolution announced in January that Trending Travel would be working with Intuitive to improve the product available to their customers online by adopting iVector and the new DealFinder solution.

With the help of our network, we have pulled together a ‘top three things to consider’ before you start your own CRS project:

1. Do you have the right resource in the team to lead this type of project?

Someone who has been through the process of replacing or introducing a CRS previously would be advantageous. It is also critical to have someone who can get under the skin of what all the stakeholders across the business need from the migration.

2. Take time to understand:

Have you provided the systems company with a clear list of objectives and expected deliverables from the project?

Have you fully understood how things work now? For example, what are your product rules – what is your pricing strategy – what is your reporting process – how are you managing customer data? Is this the right way to do things, or does this project give you the opportunity to be more slick and more automated. Have you fully understood how you want them to work once the system is in place?

What tools or processes if introduced, would help your team perform better? What features does the system have that can drive a much more powerful customer experience? Can you support those features with the right content?

3. Don’t underestimate the need to plan:

You will need to populate the system with all your contracts and content.

You may need to integrate your system with other 3rd parties. be sure to give them plenty of warning so they have resource available to hit your go live deadlines.

You need to train and onboard employees.

You need to test, test and test again, before you put the system live.

If you are looking for some specialist skills to help you define, plan and lead a new technology project, get in touch with the Gail Kenny Recruitment team. We will help ensure you have the team you need, to deliver a successful project.