Travel Technology
Among our clients is a global financial institution. We are responsible for servicing 10 locations within Asia Pacific with about 6,500 employees across the region.
The client came to us with a requirement to extend HRG Profile in key sites around the globe. The technology had already been successfully implemented in Australia, Hong Kong and Singapore. However, other geographical locations are more complex because they employ their own in-house administration systems.
HRG Toppan Japan is a good example because it uses Apollo for its GDS requirements and to add further complexity, stores all data including travellers’ profile in its proprietary Skylink mid-office system which is not compatible with any other systems. The language barrier is also a factor as all information with Skylink is in Japanese and requires translation.
Japan is, however, one of the key Asia Pacific markets so our client is keen to align the destination as closely as possible with other markets in terms of how travellers’ profiles are stored and retrieved for booking.
The client’s global team joined forces with our technology support team to research the possibility of building an online profile tool for use by Japan with close resemblance to HRG Profile. More importantly the online tool has to have the capability to enable interaction between the online profile tool and Skylink without human intervention.
The process required a number of steps including working with HRG Toppan Japan to map out all the fields in Skylink, a time and labour intensive task because the system is based on market requirements within Japan and because of the language hurdle. Our technology team then took the translated data and their experience of HRG Profile to build a Japan Profiler tool.
The technology was demonstrated to the client and adjustments made to allow integration of Skylink. Further testing took place until finally the solution was ready to be demonstrated to our client in April 2011.
The entire project was achieved through great team effort from both HRG Toppan Japan and the our technology support team in Asia Pacific. The combined experience and knowledge of both parties also meant we were able to deliver a result that is workable for our client and which also has great potential for other HRG clients within Japan.
“When the tool was showcased in early April, we were very impressed with the touch and feel of the Japan Online Profile solution. A pilot test is currently being arranged by us to introduce it to our local bookers and travellers as well as within our HQ before deciding the final date for full implementation.” Commented our client.