Applix the business analytics software solutions provider says that Gold Medal Travel, the UK tour operator, is achieving near real-time budgeting and reporting with the help of its newly-installed Applix solution. Applix was deployed at Gold Medal Travel in March 2007 to provide daily statistical reporting and analysis of sales to airlines, hotels and independent travel agents across the world.
The combination of the Applix TM1 analytics engine and Applix Executive Viewer (EV ) with its self-service analysis and reporting, provides Gold Medal Travel with a high performance business analytics solution and a user-friendly interface, enabling employees across all the divisions, including the call centre, to access and benefit from on demand budgeting, reporting and analytics.
Gold Medal Travel is an established travel company with more than 30 years of expertise, 600-plus employees and an annual turnover of £350m. It services more than 600,000 customers each year, providing access to airfares from more than 130 of the world's leading airlines to 1,500 destinations, 30,000 hotels worldwide and car hire/rental agencies in more than 50 countries. Applix has the ability to rapidly and accurately analyse and manage this vast amount of disparate and complex data on a single platform.
"As soon as I joined Gold Medal Travel in October 2006, I realised that in order to compete with other market leaders in the travel industry, we needed to upgrade our old and sluggish systems where information needing to be processed and analysed required weeks of time-consuming effort," commented Steve Bacon, Group Finance Director of Gold Medal Travel. "Applix was the obvious solution as the application had already demonstrated its capabilities during my previous experiences with it at the online home shopping retailer, Littlewoods. EV was a natural addition to the Applix solution, integrating so simply and offering the extra support required for an integrated and effective BI tool. Although it is still in the early stages of deployment, Applix TM1 and EV are proving a very powerful combination."
Implementation has only recently been completed at Gold Medal Travel but the company is already realising a number of benefits. Integration with the existing system has been achieved with minimal disruption and, with the help of Applix partner ICIT, installation was rapid and straight forward.
Martin Richmond-Coggan, VP of EMEA Applix, explained, "In essence, the Applix solution is in place to forecast profitability. With Applix, the customer and supplier data is automatically updated overnight, reducing response time and manpower. This enables senior executives at Gold Medal Travel the ability to analyse the data on a timely basis and explore areas where the company can be even more profitable."
Gold Medal Travel plans to expand the Applix software user community and to provide access to the individual passenger data level in addition to the current hotel and airline levels.
