Improved Customer Service from New Booking System!

The award-winning London Duck Tours (http://www.londonducktours.co.uk) is London's most innovative adventure! The company runs amphibious craft known as "DUKW"s, originally used for Operation Overlord, the D-Day landings in 1944. These have been converted into passenger tour vehicles and now take London's visitors on a ninety-minute adventure around the UK's capital city on both land and water, the only tour to do so.

Each of the numerous vehicles carries thirty passengers, running to a strict timetable throughout daylights hours. London Duck Tours accepts bookings via the telephone, Internet, and ticketing agencies. Customers may also purchase walk-up tickets on site and board immediately. The company prides itself on its customer service, and at its hub is the online ticketing system.

The Background

London Ducks had been using a packaged application for several years; but what had started as a system to automate this aspect of the business, became a problem in others. Business planning, reporting, statistics, and last-minute changes or bookings were all becoming problematic as the business grew. Additionally, the existing system constrained current and future business expansion by imposing processes and procedures that didn't match the reality of the business requirements.

To top it all, the vendor was not providing the level of service required to support such a business-critical system.

Managing Director, John Bigos, looked for alternatives, but was frustrated when only finding more inflexible packages or expensive bespoke software on the market. It was then that he heard about Appligenics.

The Agile+ Workshop

Appligenics took a completely different approach, focusing on the needs of the business rather than the technological platform. This commenced with a workshop that examined and challenged the way that the business operated. Because the Appligenics Business Analyst took a completely different approach, it was possible to engage with all the key personnel in the business - those that control day-to-day operations as well as executives. The workshop examined not only the various permutations for ticketing, but delved deeper into the back-office processes looking for ways to improve efficiency.

A number of new ideas were developed. Following the workshop a report was published by Appligenics presenting a software solution to turn these ideas into reality. Accompanying this report was a detailed Time & Cost Model that proposed a fixed-price service agreement to design and develop the new application using the Agile+ methods and the supporting Appligenics Designer and Generator products.

The proposal was a fixed-price contract, giving Duck Tours absolute certainty about the cost of the replacement system. Even better, the price was actually less than the cost of the original packaged product, and would exactly match the requirements of the business.

The first stage in the design was to undertake more detailed workshops in which the processes and procedures, data and business rules were deconstructed and documented. This process revealed more new ideas, and using the Appligenics Time & Cost Model it was possible to get an immediate assessment of any extra effort involved. In fact this turned out to be negligible, and therefore these new ideas were quickly assimilated into the design.

A prototype design was quickly developed, and the Appligenics database and business rules reports were created to cross-check with the key operational management that the design was following the desired direction. This design was gradually refined, and on each further iteration of the system, it was readily possible to fine-tune based on experience of using a real system.

The system was delivered, complete with integration into HSBC's automated credit card processing, in the early summer of 2004.

Summary

Using Appligenics, London Duck Tours has discarded an inflexible packaged system, and replaced it with one that costs less, is more reliable, and has significantly improved the efficiency of back-office processes, business reporting and planning. London Duck Tours' own staff can now undertake routine maintenance changes on the system, such as adding or changing new tour timetables. For more substantial changes, Appligenics can supply an Analyst to make the changes in the original design and quickly regenerate the system.

The degree of agility that the company now enjoys was previously impossible, meaning that it can offer a better and more responsive service to its customers, both passengers and agencies alike. The real payback is that improving the overall efficiency of the business makes it possible to significantly increase passenger numbers and maintain high levels of service without any need to increase back-office staff.