RE: Double or quits Jet?Hi Jet,
Softvoyage = Openfares
Softvoyage resell Openfares to consolidators. (Potential customers for SRM and other SCS distribution links?)
However 'The Travel System' which their own Tour operator system looks like direct compettiton for TT imo.
The NR you quoted was for the provision of Tour product not consolidator product to Leisurelink which sounds like 'The Travel System' to me? An it is pure internet based so no requirement for green screen GDS links that SCS specialise in.
Don't see the relevance to us from information provided?
Neither have I heard anything linking SCS / Softvoyage. (Not that that means much).
I hope there is some link up with Softvoyage as they are otherwise competition. However, we are already struggling with the epice of the pie we already have in front of us, so no real worries.
Accovia / Logibro
Same business as TT/SB, and a system we have lost out to in the past I beleive. We, adn the GDS's they partnered up with now that the system is not that good. They do however have a customer base. The opportunity there is to port existing customers from this inferior legacy system to TT/SB. Wouldn't it be nice to have the last laugh there.
Porting one is hard work, but once you have writtent the data concversion tools, recreated existing link functionality to all existing platforms, done the training, managed the switchover, ironed out the inevitable problesm in that process, the others are a 'cake cutting' excercise. Definitely potential to accelerate number of TT/SB customers comeing on line and increase the number of customers wiating in line to go live (we don't seem to have as shortage there)
But even cookie cutting is not that fast. Change mangement is hard work, systems are the same, but you are manging / training new staff everytime. If anything like that ever happened they would be doing well to port 2 a month accross, and one would be acceptable IMO.
From walking into each customer to going live will probably still take a few months. For comparison, we are seeing lead times from announcment to going live of 6 months on New TT/B deal, though hopefully this will come down a little in time. It is not a technical issue, it's just how long these kind of significant changes take. The only way to get more onboard quickly is to run more in parallel, depending on how many are run in parallel, that will require more mangement and potentially more staff.
Just to clear one thing up, I never predicted 1 deal live per month. I set it as a minimum benchmark. SCS were predicting 4 SRM deals a month and one TT/SB from 1st quarter this year. I thought they were being overly optimistic to begin with an I set the lowest level that was reasonable as one deal per month, just coincidence that is what they have delivered so far.
I expect Openfares deals to ramp up a little, Openfares involves little training or change for the company being hooked in. They largely carry on working as before, just as well as receiving bookings via web, they get them via SRM too. They stiil using the same softwsare (Openfares). Minimal change management.
Agentwares is a distribution agreement I beleive, so other than contracts, it should be trivial to hook existing customers through into agentware. The links / interface needs developing once and should work for all, possibley with a little customisation for each provider. If a customer is hooked into solarnet with openfares booking engine, either by being on openfares, or hopefully soon, on TT but interfacing through an Openfares booking engine, I assume they will be available for agentware. As for livelynx+ customers, not so sure after what Bob said about the booking engine and what we have seen from a year of being live (negligable income because few TA's choose to use it). Again minimal change managemnt, some marketing maybe of the new content. buth that will be doen by agentware.
I do expect to see more than one significant system going live per month from here on in. Just not getting carried away with heady specualting, my liver can't take the alcohol required to sedate me enough to sleep. Though looking forward to trying out some of these tequila's
Was there any decision on Restaurants? I don't Vancouver that well so just say the time and the place and I'll be there.
Idle