Running head: BUSINESS MANAGEMENT SYSTEM 1

Business Management System

Working with Phoenix Travel Group

Shalmon V. Ghagre (Student ID-10830873)

Coventry University

Author Note

This paper was prepared for the CW2 of 7078CEM Business Process Engineering

with Enterprise Systems Module.

BUSINESS MANAGEMENT SYSTEM 2

Business Management System

Working with Phoenix Travel Group

For this coursework in our module, we, as a group of 5 were to assume that we were a

group of Enterprise Consultants hired by a travel agency (Phoenix Travel Group) currently

having contrasting Business Management System.

Briefly researching on the various enterprise systems that could be used for this

agency, each of us divided the work equally amongst us and worked on analyzing and

evaluating the travel agency’s business requirements.

Towards the end of our analysis and evaluation the conclusion arrived at was that

TravelBox ERP vendor would be the best fit for our Travel Agency.

Background

Based in London, UK and founded in 1922 with over 30 employees last year, Phoenix
Travel Group (PTG) is well known for its economical flight tickets and holiday bookings,
having a Net Worth of over £450 million. Providing tickets to more than 200+ destinations,
PTG aims to invest over £25 Million on a new project which has a smooth system that works
24/7.

Targeting to employ around 45 employees this year, PTG aims to reach around 45
million customers this year and envisions to double it by the next.

Personal Reflection

Following a brief analysis of the possible issues that PTG could face with their current
systems, I learnt that Accounting and Finance would pose to be one of their biggest
challenges, owing to the difficulty in tracking customer information, tax reports, flow of cash
and thus are in a vulnerable position, prone to make errors in data entry, thereby complicating
the calculation of their net profit and annual financial reports.
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PTG still uses Legacy Systems that comes with a lot of vulnerabilities in terms of security
since the data is entered manually on a spreadsheet. Reflecting with respect to operational
management, PTG lacks speedy customer service owing to the back-to-back calls for
enquires and bookings, personalized bookings etc.

Manual conversions of orders to actual bookings, change in refund policies and cancellations
are tedious and challenging, to say the least. The lack of an online presence is resulting in a
loss of both existing and potential customers as the customers currently must either call up
the agency to enquire and book or come to the physical location.

One of the biggest concerns for a travel agent is to establish and maintain a reliable online
presence (Veronika T, 2019). Their current practice of manually processing payrolls and
generating invoices, which is time consuming, can be mitigated with the introduction of an
online route, facilitating the automation of the process of enquiries and the generation of
customer invoices, amongst other things.

The maintenance of a separate database to store the accounting details and an accounting
software would help in their calculation of profits and maintenance of financial reports,
further preventing legal issues like auditing and taxing, and even lawsuits that may be filed
against them as they now would have a solid trail to back them up. With the online route
present, it would help PTG would clear out possible existing backlogs on customer requests
and in turn ease the process of bookings.

Proposed Enterprise Systems. Our team came up with 3 different Enterprise

Systems that would help PTG mitigate a most of their existing challenges and thus run
efficiently and smoothly.
q Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central
q TravelBox
q Oracle ERP Cloud
q SAP S/4 HANA

Since many business processes in today’s travel industry transact almost

instantaneously, powerful booking engines, travel ERP systems, and automation software for
repetitive processes are key drivers in helping agencies achieve the speed, transparency, and
visibility necessary to compete with OTAs and other travel management companies. (Nick
Ostdick, 2016)
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System Implementation and Improvement of Business Process Plan. In the

Analysis and Design stage, we would carry out a brief analysis ensuring that no critical
processes are missed out, re-engineer the business process to fit the template and carefully
plan and execute a change strategy.

In the Acquisition and Development stage, we would train and assign a technical team
to perform the basic installation and configuration process along with the re-engineering of
the business process and configurations of Authorisations and Permissions.

With the writing of a script, the data would be extracted from existing excel
spreadsheets via API that comes with the new system, thereby creating a master data.

Since there is no unique selling point in the current system, we decided to go about
with vanilla implementation, which would be implemented stage wise, to target the maximum
value processes first like automating the flights & hotels bookings and their payments.

The accounting and Payroll process can be implemented last as a small team would be
sufficient to handle the process, since automating the process is rather less complex.

Finally, in the operational stage, the system would be handed over to PTG with
appropriate training given to the internal team to adapt, support and take care of upgrades of
the system.

Risks and Mitigation. Re-engineering of business processes brings with it posssible chances
of failure and thus poses to be a risk.

In order to implement the new ERP system, business processes need to be changed to fit the
template, which can be challenging as it is time consuming. Not only so but the
communication between the internal and the external teams must be effective in order to
ensure the successful execution of the plan and work efficiently.

Having been accustomed to the existing disparate system, the employees may be reluctant
and hesitant in welcoming their new roles in the proposed systems. In order for them to adapt
to the new business processes and participate actively in the ERP implementation, it is
essential that employees understand the reasons contributing to the need for change in
systems and be thoroughly aware with the exact changes, which would require intensive
training.
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The personnel chosen for training would be instructed either by a single super-user or by a
support team and thus would have to be the best and most aware about the present business
processes. Security threats can never be completely eradicated but can be prevented by
training the employees to maintain a strong password, keeping their systems up to date and
installing a good anti-virus software.

Among most common web security issues like zero-day vulnerability and malware, are XSS
(cross site scripting), SQL Injection, Denial-of-Service Attack, leading to breach of data.
Some among the many ways to mitigate the web security issues that lead to breach of data
are:
q IPS (Intrusion-Prevention System)
q Inclusion of HTTPS
q SSL Certificates

Another effective mitigation technique is the “Incident Response Team”, that are prepared to
receive and respond to any and every emergency that may arise, with specific regard to
breach of data. This ensures the quick recovery post cyber incidents and further prevents
similar situations arising.

The prevention of loss of data and the reversal of problems that come with updatations is
possible with the presence of an effective “backup system”. The process of migrating web
hosts is also simplified with the existence of a backup system.

Conclusion. We chose TravelBox as an ERP vendor for PTG as it allows API Integration
with third party flight and hotel platforms as it’s less time consuming and the integration is
not built from scratch and it has 24/7 live support.

Since the standard industry process is already introduced, they would just have to Re-
Engineer the business processes and the software also includes a sales platform specifically
tailored for the travel industry

TravelBox is more financially viable option compared to SAP S/4 HANA and Oracle
ERP as there is less cost involved for consultants and customizations, even cheaper than ERP
Systems like MS Dynamics.
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In the current scenario where there is a lot of competition amongst other travel
agencies, the agency must maintain an undoubtable standard of travel business to retain their
customers.

Given the current situation where each of us are geographically distant, connecting as
a group posed to be a challenge while working on this case study. With better coordination,
cooperation and communication, this challenge can be solved in the future.

The above findings are a result of our research, keeping in mind the time constraint
faced. It must be noted that travel, in itself, is a vast field of study with immense depth and
knowledge, requiring both time and effort to significantly understand it. With better
synchronized efforts in the forthcoming coursework like this, efficiency can be ensured.
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References

Chapter 13 Travel agents and airlines--rights and liabilities. (n.d.). Retrieved from

https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Chapter 13 Travel agents and airlines--rights and liabilities.-

a0184699744

Ellice, & Ellice. (2021, October 07). 10 Important Reasons to Perform a Website Backup -

DreamHost. Retrieved from https://www.dreamhost.com/blog/10-important-reasons-to-

perform-website-backup/

Ostdick, N. (n.d.). 3 Business Process Challenges for Travel Agents. Retrieved from

https://www.dcsplus.net/blog/3-business-process-challenges-for-travel-agents

Tandon, V. (2019, August 28). 10 key Challenges Faced by Travel Agencies and Solutions.

Retrieved from https://yourstory.com/mystory/10-key-challenges-faced-by-travel-agencies-

and-sol/amp