Case Study 3

Travel and Leisure Customer

Overview

Our client is a leader in the Travel and Leisure reservations and market analysis segment. Their product set provides the right combination of intelligence and technology to help drive long-term profitability across the entire operation from reservations and distribution to market analysis and Internet marketing. The client offers a suite of business process management (BPM) solutions that provide hotels with the right tools to drive success in the world of electronic distribution and marketing. Our experienced consultants work with hoteliers to implement proven industry best practices, optimize asset utilization and increase profitability. The client has a strong focus on the developing and monitoring electronic distribution channels.

  The Challenge

Critical applications in the core product offering were experiencing failures and availability issues during standard business hours and had limited scalability that would not support the projected revenue growth. The business requirements were not supported for current customers and limitation existed in the development capability for new applications.

Results

E5 Systems initially assessed the capabilities and performance of the IT organization along with its alignment with the business needs. The E5 specialists analyzed our client's application portfolio/products, processes, tools, budget and infrastructure to deliver an application roadmap with plans and action items detailing a number of enhancement, transformation or migration options. These results were presented to and reviewed with our client's executive leadership and acted on accordingly.

Following the completion of the assessment, E5 Systems engaged in an Application Management contract to support their most strategic/critically important application, the web based reservation system, along with all APIs and interface programs. These services encompassed the following areas:

• Applications Development:
  • Working in all phases of the development life cycle with the client E5 Systems created a resource team, on-shore and off-shore, to support requirements through post implementation support.
  • E5 Systems provided the experience,technology, and resources with the industries most aggressive pricing to address requirements that enabled our clients to implement a new application and architecture to better meet their needs in the most cost-effective way possible.
• Application Management:
  • Documented the existing application to baseline the functional capabilities in the system. Defects were identified and modifications performed to improve the system capabilities.
  • With the knowledge base on the E5 team we supported the customer's requirements for system enhancements and new development. By following the E5 Systems methodology significant IT budget savings were received and increases in overall revenue gained by application improvements.
  • E5 Systems transformed the down time from regularly "crashing" to less than .005% a month while delivering an 8 week release schedule to correct defects and implement new business requirements.
  • Quality Assurance / Testing:
    • E5 Systems implemented the the client's first ever Testing Factory, including but not limited to over 10,000 cases, Test Planning, Scripting & Execution, Quality Control Metrics and Automated Testing.
  • Case by case staffing and projects:
    • E5 Systems regularly worked with specific staffing needs including but not limited to:
      • Computer Operations assessment and review.
      • Due Diligence on several business opportunities.
      • Consolidation of offices / data centers / telecommunications.
      • Closing facilities and eliminating/consolidating live contracts associated with those facilities.