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Home > Resources > Case Study > BTI Canada
Fiorano Platform improves financial data handling and business activity monitoring at Business Travel International
BTI Canada, Canadian partner for Business Travel International (BTI) is Travel management company with 3,000 offices in 80 countries. Its divisions include corporate travel management, Travel Escapes, Govt. travel service with various other programs and services.
Fiorano Platform improves financial data handling and business activity monitoring at Business Travel International
BTI Canada, Canadian partner for Business Travel International (BTI) is Travel management company with 3,000 offices in 80 countries. Its divisions include corporate travel management, Travel Escapes, Govt. travel service with various other programs and services.
USE CASE
System Integration
BENEFITS
Convenience in monitoring
INDUSTRY
Travel and Leisure
KEY PRODUCT COMPONENTS
Fiorano Platform
Business Challenge
A year ago, BTI Canada started to provide travel services in support of a significant Loyalty Program. End-users calling into make travel reservations had to have the ability to pay for tickets based on accumulated points - as opposed to miles which are used for other loyalty programs. The deployment of this loyalty program required special workflows to be implemented across the Booking, Accounting and Ticketing departments at BTI Canada, to ensure that all transactions were logged and accounts reconciled easily.
a. From within SABRE (Global Distribution Systems) linked to through BTI Canada's Booking Application
b. Directly into the Tour operator mainframes with the same Booking Application
c. Through third-party travel websites such as www.travelocity.com
Transaction tracking was complicated by the fact that a travel counselor making a reservation can purchase various travel products through at least three mechanisms:
The request for each reservation flows through three departments - Booking, PNR Validation and Ticketing - prior to final confirmation and ticketing. Various business rules have to be applied to ensure proper tracking. For instance:
When the booking is made through the SABRE reservation system or directly with the Tour Operators, then the tracking information is stored on the Tour Operators reservation system.
When the booking is made through third-party web-sites by the travel counselor using the BTI Canada Internal Charge Cards (referred to as "Ghost cards") then BTI Canada does not have a comprehensive mechanism to track which travel counselor did which booking, or to consistently check the financial commitments made by each travel counselor.
3,000 Offices
Connected across 80 countries
Fiorano Platform maximizes global opportunities while responding to unique local needs.
Business Challenge
A year ago, BTI Canada started to provide travel services in support of a significant Loyalty Program. End-users calling into make travel reservations had to have the ability to pay for tickets based on accumulated points - as opposed to miles which are used for other loyalty programs. The deployment of this loyalty program required special workflows to be implemented across the Booking, Accounting and Ticketing departments at BTI Canada, to ensure that all transactions were logged and accounts reconciled easily.
a. From within SABRE (Global Distribution Systems) linked to through BTI Canada's Booking Application
b. Directly into the Tour operator mainframes with the same Booking Application
c. Through third-party travel websites such as www.travelocity.com
Transaction tracking was complicated by the fact that a travel counselor making a reservation can purchase various travel products through at least three mechanisms:
The request for each reservation flows through three departments - Booking, PNR Validation and Ticketing - prior to final confirmation and ticketing. Various business rules have to be applied to ensure proper tracking. For instance:
When the booking is made through the SABRE reservation system or directly with the Tour Operators, then the tracking information is stored on the Tour Operators reservation system.
When the booking is made through third-party web-sites by the travel counselor using the BTI Canada Internal Charge Cards (referred to as "Ghost cards") then BTI Canada does not have a comprehensive mechanism to track which travel counselor did which booking, or to consistently check the financial commitments made by each travel counselor.
3,000 Offices
Connected across 80 countries
Fiorano Platform maximizes global opportunities while responding to unique local needs.
"In addition to minimizing accounting errors, BTI uses Fiorano Platform monitoring capabilities for tracking the accountability of the 140 travel counselors at various call centers located in Canada."
Sebastien Flacher, Technical Architect, BTI Canada
"In addition to minimizing accounting errors, BTI uses Fiorano Platform monitoring capabilities for tracking the accountability of the 140 travel counselors at various call centers located in Canada."
Sebastien Flacher, Technical Architect, BTI Canada
Solution
- XML in general and Fiorano Platform specifically were key to the success of the project
- BTI Canada worked in Phases, prioritizing sub-projects based on their time to market and the measurable benefits they would bring to the business
- BTI Canada used Fiorano Platform to monitor existing processes and track operations performed on Charges and PNRs. This brought immediate business value by creating accountability for the travel counsellors as well as tracking financial transactions in Real-Time
- The approach was non-intrusive and involved only minor changes to existing applications. The applications would simply notify Fiorano Platform of the completion of their task for each charge and PNR through a basic HTTP POST
- Time-to-Market was short and risks linked to modifying large chunks of code was removed
- The system was designed and written by BTI Canada's Technical Architect Sebastien Flacher and consultant Laurent Michalkovice
Solution
- XML in general and Fiorano Platform specifically were key to the success of the project
- BTI Canada worked in Phases, prioritizing sub-projects based on their time to market and the measurable benefits they would bring to the business
- BTI Canada used Fiorano Platform to monitor existing processes and track operations performed on Charges and PNRs. This brought immediate business value by creating accountability for the travel counsellors as well as tracking financial transactions in Real-Time
- The approach was non-intrusive and involved only minor changes to existing applications. The applications would simply notify Fiorano Platform of the completion of their task for each charge and PNR through a basic HTTP POST
- Time-to-Market was short and risks linked to modifying large chunks of code was removed
- The system was designed and written by BTI Canada's Technical Architect Sebastien Flacher and consultant Laurent Michalkovice
Fiorano Deployment Architecture at BTI Canada
Charge Workflow implemented as a Fiorano Platform Application
BTI Canada's first Fiorano Platform Workflow enabled them to track commitments made to their internal cards by the travel counsellors in Real Time BTI Canada built XML configuration files listing Credit Card numbers and made the booking applications parse these files Each time a card usage was detected.
BTI Canada captures the current screen or web page as well as the following two pages so that they are able to track back who the booking was for and how much was spent. All this is placed into an XML document and sent to Fiorano Platform through a "ChargeListener" running as a servlet on a web server Chargelistener Fiorano Platform Service
This receives the XML messages sent by BTI Canada Booking applications (Custom 4GL application and/or customized browser). LogActivity1 Fiorano Platform Service – It is responsible for tracking for whom and when exactly a charge was created (Ghost Card used). It then transfers this data into a database "log". In this case, BTI Canada mostly logs Travel Counsellor Activity to build accountability.
ChargeWorklist Fiorano Platform Service – BTI Canada needed to gather all the incoming messages into one Fiorano Platform service so that their business users could verify them one by one (through a web page) and eventually validate each of them. They therefore defined a new Component called a Worklist.
A "Worklist" is a servlet running on a J2EE web server and acts as a "message accumulator". The Accumulator is queried through an XML API over HTTP. The XML API allows building customized Web pages to hide XML details from the users. Users can then verify the accuracy of the data, make comments and changes and finally let the message go to the next task. Here is a "Business User Interface" with the list of charges recently captured by BTI Canada booking applications and sitting in the worklist:
LogActivity2 Fiorano Platform Service
This service once again checks the messages and tracks who and when the previous operation was performed. In this case, BTI Canada logs QA people and supervisors responsible for verifying the accuracy of the information entered in the system. The messages are transferred into a database for reporting purposes. Further reporting web pages were build for the Finance Department and BTI Canada Call Center Division. Once again, changes to BTI Canada applications were very easy to achieve. This was achieved by downloading the list of credit cards, capturing three screens (terminal screens or web pages), building an XML message and sending it to the "ChargeListener". To handle errors BTI Canada attached mail and display components to each RDBMS. (For Adapters ON_EXCEPTION out port.) This way the system administrator is notified as soon as the Database link encounters any problem. This functionality is later added to the custom made Fiorano Platform Components. In this first Phase, Fiorano Platform is not used to perform processing but is used to monitor the work being done by Travel Counsellors and Applications. This non-intrusive approach provides a great value by reporting inconsistencies within existing Business Processes.
a. Booking Workflow implemented as a Fiorano Platform Application
b. Sample of a Document sent to Fiorano Platform by the booking Application
Fiorano Deployment Architecture at BTI Canada
Charge Workflow implemented as a Fiorano Platform Application
BTI Canada's first Fiorano Platform Workflow enabled them to track commitments made to their internal cards by the travel counsellors in Real Time BTI Canada built XML configuration files listing Credit Card numbers and made the booking applications parse these files Each time a card usage was detected.
BTI Canada captures the current screen or web page as well as the following two pages so that they are able to track back who the booking was for and how much was spent. All this is placed into an XML document and sent to Fiorano Platform through a "ChargeListener" running as a servlet on a web server Chargelistener Fiorano Platform Service
This receives the XML messages sent by BTI Canada Booking applications (Custom 4GL application and/or customized browser). LogActivity1 Fiorano Platform Service – It is responsible for tracking for whom and when exactly a charge was created (Ghost Card used). It then transfers this data into a database "log". In this case, BTI Canada mostly logs Travel Counsellor Activity to build accountability.
ChargeWorklist Fiorano Platform Service – BTI Canada needed to gather all the incoming messages into one Fiorano ESB service so that their business users could verify them one by one (through a web page) and eventually validate each of them. They therefore defined a new Component called a Worklist.
A "Worklist" is a servlet running on a J2EE web server and acts as a "message accumulator". The Accumulator is queried through an XML API over HTTP. The XML API allows building customized Web pages to hide XML details from the users. Users can then verify the accuracy of the data, make comments and changes and finally let the message go to the next task. Here is a "Business User Interface" with the list of charges recently captured by BTI Canada booking applications and sitting in the worklist:
LogActivity2 Fiorano Platform Service
This service once again checks the messages and tracks who and when the previous operation was performed. In this case, BTI Canada logs QA people and supervisors responsible for verifying the accuracy of the information entered in the system. The messages are transferred into a database for reporting purposes. Further reporting web pages were build for the Finance Department and BTI Canada Call Center Division. Once again, changes to BTI Canada applications were very easy to achieve. This was achieved by downloading the list of credit cards, capturing three screens (terminal screens or web pages), building an XML message and sending it to the "ChargeListener". To handle errors BTI Canada attached mail and display components to each RDBMS. (For Adapters ON_EXCEPTION out port.) This way the system administrator is notified as soon as the Database link encounters any problem. This functionality is later added to the custom made Fiorano Platform Components. In this first Phase, Fiorano Platform is not used to perform processing but is used to monitor the work being done by Travel Counsellors and Applications. This non-intrusive approach provides a great value by reporting inconsistencies within existing Business Processes.
a. Booking Workflow implemented as a Fiorano Platform Application
b. Sample of a Document sent to Fiorano Platform by the booking Application
Results
BTI Canada provides travel services to a range of corporate customers, customizing solutions according to unique needs. One of its largest customers offers a comprehensive points-based loyalty program. BTI Canada's three departments Booking, Accounting and Ticketing were using applications that were developed as departmental solutions. There was no way to check the consistency of various financial transactions for reconciliation purposes at any given point of time.
The problem of tracking accounting errors was compounded by the fact that these applications were running on different platforms and were written using varied programming languages. BTI Canada solved this problem by using Fiorano Platform to track commitments made to their internal credit cards by their travel counselors in Real Time. In addition to minimizing accounting errors, BTI uses Fiorano Platform monitoring capabilities for tracking the accountability of the 140 travel counselors at various call centers located in Canada.
Results
BTI Canada provides travel services to a range of corporate customers, customizing solutions according to unique needs. One of its largest customers offers a comprehensive points-based loyalty program. BTI Canada's three departments Booking, Accounting and Ticketing were using applications that were developed as departmental solutions. There was no way to check the consistency of various financial transactions for reconciliation purposes at any given point of time.
The problem of tracking accounting errors was compounded by the fact that these applications were running on different platforms and were written using varied programming languages. BTI Canada solved this problem by using Fiorano Platform to track commitments made to their internal credit cards by their travel counselors in Real Time. In addition to minimizing accounting errors, BTI uses Fiorano Platform monitoring capabilities for tracking the accountability of the 140 travel counselors at various call centers located in Canada.
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