travel tech insights

Today’s travel companies often find themselves in the same scenario as companies within a host of other industries: The prospect of having to do more with less.

Because the 21st Century travel industry demands travel companies operate with greater agility, flexibility, and visibility, travel companies are constantly tasked with increasing efficiency, reducing costs, and enhancing the overall customer experience in order to remain viable and competitive. With such a crowded field in today’s travel landscape, travel companies  can find themselves struggling to navigate the wealth of options, methods, and modes when it comes to increasing the efficacy of their products and services.

This is where a travel ERP solution is an important value proposition for travel companies as they strive to multi-task and work faster and more efficiently. The capacity of a travel ERP solution to automate workflows and back-office tasks, and fast, accurate invoicing and documentation reduce headaches for travel companies by streamlining once manual, time-consuming activities. This provides travel companies with greater visibility and responsiveness across each touch point of the value chain.

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.

Today’s global travel industry is awash in complex actions and tasks travel management companies must undertake to remain competitive and acquire and retain customers. But with so many players in the travel and tourism landscape - travel agents, tour operators, and more - customers too can find themselves struggling to navigate the wealth of options, methods, and modes when it comes to researching, comparing, and completing bookings. While the needs of the customer and TMC might vary, the desire for responsive, agile, and transparent operational platforms is key.

This is where a travel ERP solution is an important value proposition on both sides of the equation, for TMCs and customers alike. The capacity of a travel ERP solution to automated workflows and back-office tasks, and fast, accurate invoicing and documentation reduce headaches for both parties by streamlining once manual, time-consuming activities and providing TMCs and customers 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.

Let’s talk about cooking for a moment, particularly the cooking of a stew. A typical stew is made up of many core ingredients essential for a healthy diet: meat, starch, carbs, vegetables, and others. These ingredients are then combined in one-pot for a well-rounded eating experience that is efficient for the diner and often easy for the cook to prepare. The end result, if done properly, is a well-integrated dish of complex flavors that is often simple to execute and easy to repeat in the future.

The same is true when it comes to ERP solutions for travel agents. In today’s complex, interconnected travel industry, travel agents are called to execute any number of disparate tasks at any given moment - everything from travel operations to financial duties to operational or back-office functions. The result of these demands is a complex business atmosphere that can require much in the way of time and resources, which can hamper an agent’s productivity and efficiency in serving customers.