Perfect profiles in 15 travel agencies - in only 4 months
Sam Pannemans completely implemented the profile management tool Umbrella Faces at 15 different business travel agencies in Belgium. This cleaned up all existing profiles and put them into a standard format.
Thanks to different assistance tools for data editing, this ambitious project was completed in less than 4 months! It was also very important that it required no major effort from the travel agency and its employees. Business could be continued as usual.
We think this is amazing, so we asked Sam to tell us a little more.
Sam, before this implementation you evaluated a whole series of profile management tools. Why did you choose Umbrella Faces?
There were four major reasons:
With Umbrella we are ready for GDPR. Data protection is a very critical subject for us and our clients.
With Umbrella we can adjust the mapping ourselves. With many other tools you can only do so with tedious support processes.
Umbrella offers flexibility to define individual new profile fields at any time. This means we can implement special requirements from companies and travel agencies at any time with minimal effort.
You answer your emails and calls immediately.
All in all, we were very quickly convinced that Faces was by far the best tool available. And the price is comparable to what other suppliers charge, too.
Your company SEMKO then implemented Umbrella at 15 agencies in record time. Share with us a few details about this project.
The goal was to implement the new profile tool with all partners without interrupting their daily business. It was also clear that all existing profiles needed to be cleaned up and migrated.
We began by defining the standard profile. Of course every office had the need for consultation, special features and variations.
We then wrote some programs for cleaning up the profile data. Without this, cleaning the profiles from 15 different offices would have been an incredible amount of manual work.
When everything was finished, we then held customized training with every office and migrated the data outside of business hours.
The cooperation of the travel agencies was only needed for defining profiles and training.
Why is it so important that all existing profiles are cleaned up and migrated?
Only then can a TMC have a uniform process for all clients. And only so can you really utilize all the advantages of Umbrella – from data protection to the maintenance of profile data by clients.
I also understand that TMCs balk at the work involved with manual data clean up, so it really makes sense to use our tools. We can clean up very large databases and convert them into a uniform format.
Does SEMKO work on projects other than profile management?
Yes – we help TMCs automate all internal processes. Now and again we develop our own software, for example a data visualization tool that allows our clients to process and display all accumulated data.
This can then be made available in our online social intranet platforms.
Sam outside of work: where did you grow up?
I grew up in a small town named Everberg, east of Brussels. The area is very rural and close to nature. But that can be boring for young people so when I finished school I immediately moved to Brussels. There I enjoyed city life and studied tourism.
Then I spent a number of years abroad – in Mexico and Barcelona, to be exact.
And where do you live now?
Today I’m back out in the country in a lovely little town called Lubbeek. I love being outdoors, either with my dog or on my bike.
Thank you very much!
Dear readers: If you are interested in learning more, you can contact Sam Pannemans at sam@semko.be or by calling +32 497 60 01 91.