online booking system for a travel agency

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Online Booking System or a Travel Agency

www.luxot.com

Over the span o two years 6 projects o dierent sizes involving dierent unctional areas were accom-

plished by Luxot engineers:Deal “Extranet”

Full-cycle development o the new website that provides suppliers with unctionality or manag-

ing their deal advertisements hosted at the client’s site. This unctionality also collaborates with

the system or internal Deal Management. The system works as a strong operational leverage and a

way to increase ad sales volume.

Customer Reviews

The scope o this project includes the new unctionality that gives the end-users a new eature to

review and rate the hotels they have stayed at. Collected data is used to help others make an edu-

cated choice, taking into account other users’ reviews.

Deal Management ToolA new Content Management System (CMS) must replace the existing legacy system. Client’s own

new CMS allows to expand the deal business signicantly, starting rom simplied newsletters dis-

tribution to another ull-fedged site’s development. The CMS support costs are getting reduced at

the same time. Dierent components’ delivery prioritization was essential or this project.

City Resolution

Improved mechanism o determining the geographical objects rom user input that would resolve

the ambiguous cases. This would allow reduce a number o users leaving the site when encounter

resolution problems.

Site Redesign

Large-scale eort to change the look-and-eel o the client’s site, involving page-by-page redesign.

Test Automation Project

Extended initiative or the client’s regression test catalog automation and execution.

Approach The main challenge or the Luxot

team was to interact seamlessly

with the ongoing client local sot-

ware engineering process and t all

projects into the existing architec-

ture. From the get-go all teams were

making sure that they run on the

same process and standards. It was

crucial to work closely with both

business and engineering teams in

a ormat that they are comortable

with, so that everybody’s expecta-

tions could be ully met.

Initial onsite trainings or the key

technical specialists rom Luxot

provided the immersion into the cli-ent’s engineering culture, acilitated

knowledge transer and helped es-

tablishing an eective work process.




www.luxot.com

Solution

Luxot developed a unique solution or each proj-ect, based on the existing business needs.

1. Deal “Extranet”

During the rst project stage, Luxot sug-

gested an alternative approach by hav-

ing the nearshore team handle business

analysis and requirement development.

This method guaranteed a very high level

o cooperation with the local business team

and specic system suppliers. Stakeholders

were pleased with the resulting high qualityo the delivered conclusion and the require-

ments’ clarity.

From the Engineering perspective this proj-

ect required highly detailed system design

to cover all aspects o the external system:

security requirements, nancial traceability, unctional requirements, technical knowledge transer,

etc. Luxot provided about 300 pages o detailed project technical documentation where most o

these aspects were covered. The ollowing important unctionality was developed:

Web application designed or use by both sales persons and suppliers, which eliminated the• extra cost o developing two separate systems.

Support o sales agents who can work with multiple suppliers in addition to the direct supplier’s•

organizational scheme support.

Multiple alternative interaces or supplier’s data management•

CSV/MS Excel les support•

HomepageHomepage

Deal

link

Homepage

List of deals

Deal details

New

deal

Sales person

Oracle

Financials

DMTDW

reporting

Pre-mail

Allocate tonewsletter

YesMail

Click countsapp

Main site Deals site Supplier site

Newsletter

Newsletter

Deal with jump page

Direct supplier deal

1

2

3

4

5

6 7

Active

Directory

8

Project Scope:Business requirements analysis and user•

needs elicitation

Design and document ront-end projects•

o various scope

Creation and maintenance o the presen-•

tation layer o c lient’s site

Creation o the client ‘s automated news-•

letters

Integration with the c lient’s web statis-•

tics and analysis tool

QA and Test Automation•




www.luxot.com

Interactive “Web 2.0” interace•

Web Services interace•Excel reports generation, distribution and ltering in order to increase system data fow visibil-•

ity

Email notications•

Integration with Oracle Financials System•

WebDav protocol has been used or secure le access and management•

2. Customer Reviews

A new unctionality was required that would give the end-users a new eature to review and rate

the hotels they have stayed at. Client developed the requirements or this project, but lacked the

engineering resources to implement them. In order to speed up the project execution, Luxotstaed the client’s development center with additional proessional team in a matter o ew weeks.

They were quickly trained locally by the sta engineers, and the client’s site boasted the ully-unc-

tioning new eature in only in our months ollowing the initial request.

Luxot’s expertise in text analysis allowed them to propose and implement an improved mecha-

nism or user-entered text validation. Sophisticated context rules were applied in addition to the

straightorward search mechanism that was initially planned. This improvement helped the client

reduce the team o reviews moderators and have a more interactive dialog with the review author.

3. Deal Management Tool

A new deal engine with a separate Intranet web application was created in order to better serve

the rapidly evolving business needs.Deals, newsletters, deal packages and system user management tool - all unied under the•

same web interace concept

Various search options that help nd and access inormation quickly•

Multi-user transactional environment that prevents editing the same deal by more than one•

user at the same time

Individual easy-to-change entries fow•

Email notications o the deal status changes•

Active Directory integration meeting the security and usability expectations•

HTTPS•

Beyond the ull compliance with the client’s technical requirements, the system provides the ol-

lowing mission-critical benets:Matches business processes requirements•

System’s user-riendly design eliminates the need or any special training•

High scalability simplies the system’s uture enhancements•

4. City Resolution project

The improved City Resolution eature is based on state-o-the-art technology and, compared to its

predecessor, has the ollowing enhanced unctionality:

Improved resolution or cities with ambiguous locations, which allows user to unequivocally•

select between:

cities with same city name (examples: Portland, Maine vs. Portland, Oregon);•

city, state, or country with the same name (example: Jamaica, NY vs. Jamaica country);•dierent airports o the same city.•

Auto-correct and auto-complete options that deal with the issues like misspellings, punctua-•

tion in the user input, abbreviations.




www.luxot.com

• Supportfordierentlogicfordierentservices(air,hotel,car,cruise)

• Customizationtoolforthesiteadministratorsenablingthemtoupdatesysteminformationon demand

5. Site Redesign Project Stack

This project was broken down into small iterations, and delivered ew pages at a time. The biggest

technical challenges were to upgrade the site to Web 2.0 level by introducing the new interace,

while keeping the existing unctionality and extending some parts o it.

6. Test Automation Project

Luxot provided osite automation test design and testing o the product, while maintaining close

colaboration between the client’s development team and the Luxot automation team. Luxot

introduced and implemented test automation or this project, which resulted in signicant regres-

sion testing savings or the client. The project scope included:

Setting up o eective and transparent communication between the client’s testing team in di-•

erent geographic locations and time zones.

Integration o Luxot’s osite team into the client’s environment, while maintaining all the cli-•

ent’s development processes and automation tools.

Working with test documentation already developed by the client.•

Product test design services with the complete traceability to requirements and controlling test•

coverage.

Reduction o the eorts needed or regression testing due to the Segue-based test automation.•

Regression runs or every new release (monthly) during the entire product development cycle.•

BeneftsLuxot team delivered signicant enhancements or the client’s online booking system, seamlessly inte-

grating new eatures into it. The entire projected was completed on time and on budget. Luxot’s combi-

nation o nearshore and oshore development locations ensured smooth collaboration throughout the

entire project. High proessional level o Luxot engineers guaranteed high quality output ully meeting

the client’s standards. The Test Automation project helped increase the application code coverage rom

35% to 63% and the number o automated use cases went up rom 500 to 1700.

Bottom line benets include:

The expected nancial benets o the improved City Resolution and Customer Reviews eatures are• around $30 - $40k per month or each project.

Compared to customization o an out-o-the-shel CMS or implementation o an application rom an•

ASP, the ROI o the Deal Entry Tool project is about 400%.

Though not quantied yet, the intangible benets like security, usability, data propriety, and increase•

in speed are likely to be even more signicant.

Luxot World Headquarters

10-3, 1-Volokolamsky proezd123060 Moscow, Russia Tel: +7 (495) 967-8030 Toll ree: +1 (888) [email protected]

online booking system for a travel agency

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