Global Profile Management solution in Travel and Tourism
Shubhangi Bhagwat
Shubhangi_Bhagwat@Satyam.com
Track-3 The white paper is for Track-3 “Technology Business Solution in Travel Transportation space” focusing on solution architecture Also based on the solution offering and technology reach GPM provides the feature to maintain the biometric profile, voice profile, SMS profile, contact and communication profile. The real intelligence lies in applying these profiles in collaboration in distributed environment and package the solution dynamically on the fly for customer.
1. Introduction
The need for Global Profile Management solution in Travel and tourism industry. The success of travel industry is based on product positioning and product personalization. The product personalization is customer driven. The solutions and services offered are customer centric. Driving the customer centric framework for services offerings in travel and hospitality industry is challenge today. Technology has already opened many gates to drive this. The personalize services offering is the survival today.
3. GPM solution approach:
• • • • Manage Centralized Global Profile Management Manage individual PNR and Super PNR Load and timely update of profiles Automatically capture and continuous building of experience profile intelligently based on the customer opted services and choices. • Near real time distribution and updates of profile to collaboration network of travel partners, agencies, travel counselor, travel major. • Managing all international standards for profile management such as OTA, HEDNA, HITIS and technology standards such as - MIDP, Voice XML standard, Biometric Standard and so on. Profile Collaboration • The Travel and Transportation business model is based on collaboration. No single player an offer endto-end services. In such scenario the profile distribution is the key to make the collaborative service offerings. • Profile are governed by various policies either as corporate policies or membership policies or discounting policies , rules and regulations. Profile network for profile distribution and replication, • Distribution of profile is major challenge today. As Customer prefers o have only one single profile which will cover his medical profile, Hotels profile, Car Rental profile, Personal Profile, Corporate Profile, Hobbies , sports and entertainment profile and so on. • There is a network of Car Rentals who offers services for Car. Similarly Hotel brand network and its travel agent network offers hotels related services/products. • Travel products complexities are increasing day by day. There are very sophisticated and comprehensive product offerings available at customers choice.
2. The architectural challenges are as below:
• Managing distributed multiple profiles for customer such as self registration profile, corporate profile, leisure profile, experience profile, request based profile. Collaboration and timely management and distribution of these profiles. Managing precedence of various profiles on the fly to provide the personalized response. Product personalization on the fly. Dynamic packaging. Lack of standards adoption in collaboration of these profiles.
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This paper provides the Global Profile Management (GPM) Solution addressing the challenges mentioned above. The product definition is combination of Hotel, Travel by Air, Rail, and Car. The global profile management is divided into these three major categories. The Hotel profile will need to address the customer loyalty programs, memberships, ads and promotional discounting schemes, amenities preferences, event and entertainment, while the Air travel profile will require the class of travel, meal preferences, airline preferences, route preferences, pricing and discounting schemes.
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So challenge is how effectively we build and use this network while offering the services to customer online. Profile integration touch points o Travel Product Management o Fulfillment services o Accounting o Payment o Search and Booking o Reservation system o Travel Agent System o Travel Counselor Systems o GDS integration – Sabre , Apollo , Gallileo, Worldspan, Amadeus o Central reservation systems o Call Center / Travel Help desk systems o Corporate Customer’s Help desk /Travel Desk systems o Information Centers interface to provide various maps, info , events , travel guide etc o Airline Flight Information system o Weather Information System o CRM o Tour Planner o Fare Management o Inventory Management o Event Management o Reporting o DSS and BI -Data Warehouse o Customer Management System o Loyalty Program Management o E-ticketing
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expects the information or response in his style of operations. E.g if tom is working for global enterprise and owns a latest cell phone which allows all bluetooth and wireless connection and access to internet online , he will prefer the email , sms notification on his cell more than login to separe workstation/PC and then go to internet or his mailbox and check the response. At the same time during his working hr in office he will expect the response on his mail-box rather than SMS. While as if he is traveling he will prefer the response on SMS. All these Personal devices plays a very important role is service offering and so are important to be part of profile.
3. Benefits
• • • • • Dynamic Packaging ease with Global profile Management Personalized service offerings efficient and effective collaborative service offerings Multi device , multi-channel service offerings Bring new technology edge to automate, personalize, and enhance service offerings.
4. References
[1] Mobile Information Device Profile (MIDP)http://java.sun.com/products/midp [2]Open Travel Alliance (OTA) http://xml.coverpages.org/openTravel.html
4. Author name(s) and affiliation(s)
Intelligent profile capture • Experience profiles play a very important role in knowing customers betters. • Earlier there used to be only thru customer feedback form , instead can we capture the customer choice , liking and buying patterns by capturing his preferences and patterns in which he selects or deselects. This is more pro-active and delights customers if we offer services based on his choice. • Again timely capture of this experience profile online is possible thru only active and online collaboration. Shubhangi Bhagwat has been associated with IT for 13 years now. She has architected solutions in Database Management, Application Development in open systems, EAI; worked on framework development and established the methodology for education framework development in pilot projects by implementing the zachman framework. She has obtained her M.Phil in Computational Mathematics in computer graphics “Fractals” from Pune University and has been awarded a Research Skill Merit award for it. She is currently Heading Technology Group for Travel and Transportation Unit at Satyam Pune.
Profile devices
• Personalization of service offering is key driving factor today. Every user is loaded with devices and