“Information is the oil of the 21st century, and analytics is the combustion engine.” Peter Sondergaard, Gartner
The phrase we use here at Tramada Systems – Reporting is in our DNA – is more than marketing spin; it’s a fact, and has been since our product was first developed in 2001.
The tramada® solution holds every piece of information a travel agent has about their travellers, as well as information relating to any corporate clients who use the agency to manage their business travel. This has earned tramada the moniker, “the one source of truth.” And in a marketplace as competitive as the travel industry, we recognised long ago that an agency’s ability to access relevant information – in real time – allows them to make better decisions, adapt to market changes, and seize opportunities.
That’s why we empower every tramada client with a suite of embedded, pre-built Standard Reports and numerous reporting options that are intuitive and professional. This capability enables agencies to easily explore, and exploit, the extensive data they hold so that they can run their businesses better. In fact, Tramada’s out-of-the-box Standard Reports are used by many of our clients without the need for further customisation.
Advanced reporting
While standardised, regular reports can alert you to changes that warrant further investigation, true analysis involves investigative exploration of the data in a way that moves the business forward. If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve on it.
For agencies seeking to make smarter decisions, save time, and increase levels of customer service, the connect BI module – Tramada Systems’ integrated business intelligence (BI) – takes the power of reporting to a whole new level by transforming data into easy-to-understand, actionable intelligence that can inform strategic and tactical business decisions.
Here are just a few examples of important questions that can be answered by connect BI to improve productivity (and thereby, profitability):
- How can I better service my customers based on their travel habits? connect BI allows agents to anticipate customers’ needs and provide booking suggestions from insights based on historical booking trends and spend data.
- Are any of my customers under-performing and need nurturing before it is too late? Users can identify a client in crisis or a competitor poaching their business by a comparative analysis to see when travel spend drops unusually.
- Is there leakage around hotels and other content being booked outside my agency? Dynamic, real-time reporting is the easy way to increase compliance to policy and gain additional revenue “as it happens” rather than via forensic analysis.
- Do I have staff that are under-performing and need coaching? Reports that highlight KPI compliance, sales numbers and other configurable metrics can turn around a low-performing consultant or help wean out inefficiency.
- How can I track business performance on a day-to-day basis? connect BI enables managers to monitor key metrics such as bookings/revenue per consultant, data entry compliance to KPIs using logic-based identifiers, supplier spend, and market share – all in real time, and all within the tramada ecosystem for easy cross-referencing.
A picture is worth a thousand words
Key to the effectiveness of connect BI in the real world is its power of visualisation, or the presentation of data in a pictorial or graphical format – not just reports but summaries, dashboards, graphs, charts and maps – to help users to easily identify patterns and uncover insights. And connect BI does this in real time without the need for additional calculations, formatting or Vlookups.
For example, connect BI makes it easy to set and measure KPIs regarding customers, staff and suppliers with in-built Account Management dashboards that give dynamic insights and graphics showing where an agency stands in reaching targets that maximise margins and increase revenue.
Tramada Systems’ connect BI module also enables the modification of tramada’s Standard Reports. Using a simple drag-and-drop builder, travel agents can use connect BI and real-time information to build entirely new reports, charts and dashboards that are not only vital for internal analysis but can also be very valuable for client consumption.
Plus, connect BI reports can be scheduled to run periodically, and even emailed automatically to either internal or external recipients. This level of automation can save travel businesses huge amounts of time, freeing up managers to manage and leaving consultants to focus on what they do best: sell.
Better business decisions
Tramada Systems’ connect BI makes it easy to uncover relevant, detailed information from data that the agency already has: its own gold mine. However, the ability to sift through mountains of data to get the precise information an agency needs can be time-consuming. So can enabling data extracts to third-party providers and scheduling reports to save days of repetitive report creation. To help you get started on connect BI, the implementation of this module includes eight hours’ worth of complimentary coaching with a connect BI specialist. And for even further support, we offer regular training webinars, while additional consultancy services such as customised report writing are available upon request. In short, tramada clients of all sizes can tap into the countless benefits of connect BI.
Next, connect BI can showcase the results in ways that make sense to the business and its customers, such as:
- Understanding profitability and yield on a daily basis or year-on-year for comparative analysis
- Managing supplier relationships and tracking sales targets versus commissions and overrides received – allowing agents to make and manage smarter supplier agreements
- Analysing sales performance at the consultant level and across a range of categories such as compliance to client reporting SLA items, live-versus-cancelled bookings, or even amounts of discounts given out
- Creating graphical maps to track travellers, enabling agents to reach out to customers impacted by any weather or geopolitical travel disruptions
- And much, much more, all limited only by the business user’s imagination.
connect BI brings real-time insights to the forefront that would otherwise take multiple reports or data deep diving, both of which take time away from managers and agents. All too often, the administration of running and analysing reports can be so time consuming and complicated that it ends up in the too hard basket, yielding to competing priorities. Not so with connect BI: the ROI is fast and dramatic, providing the insights needed to better handle those other priorities. In a client-facing role, it allows a business to showcase its understanding of the client – providing contextual, relevant and insightful data that helps retain customers and win new business.
In an operational and supplier relations capacity, data insights empower managers to:
- Respond proactively to customers’ needs
- Reward productive staff
- Coach low performers
- Negotiate lucrative supplier agreements
- Seize opportunities that go directly to the agency’s bottom line.
Plus, connect BI clients save time, improve client relations, feel more confident about retaining existing business, and enjoy a competitive edge they can bank on.
The result: a more efficient, productive and profitable travel agency.
