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CitiDiscounts is a professional service for
Online and Offline Travel Facilitators (Travel Agents/Airlines/Hotels).
Set up to help Travel Facilitators create happier customers the
company is developed around a very innovative idea coined by Cordero
Salketing Ltd.
Cordero Salketing Ltd is a Dublin company registered in the Republic
of Ireland. |
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CitiDiscounts required a solution
with which they bring together the city based leisure business
where tourists and travelers spend money and the travel facilitators
that helped to send the tourists and travelers there in the first
place.
That is, a travel facilitator acts as a interface between a business
( e.g. a restaurant or a Bar) and the tourist that might be visiting
it. A business wants to have more and more customers to grow and
for this they are ready to offer discounts to their customers,
but how do they inform the tourists that might be flocking to
their city from other countries? Similarly how does a tourist
visiting a country for the first time can strike best deals with
the Shops/Restaurants? |
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| The challenge was to establish an effective
communication channel between the discount providers and the tourists
that might be availing those discounts. |
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After a thorough study of the concept, Icreon
suggested a solution with which CitiDiscount could offer a platform
to all the three parties ( a discount provider, a tourist and
a travel facilitator ) to help each other and in turn meant more
business for the discount provider and travel facilitator.
Icreon proposed a system under which allows City Discounts to
recruit agents for cities the world over. These city agents negotiate
discount offers with the Restaurants/Bars/Night Clubs in those
cities. These discount offers are then published on the CitiDiscounts
Database and are made available to TFs (Travel facilitators) which
in turn provide these to their customers travelling to those cities.
This means a TF is offering a value added service to its customers
which means more client retention ability and on the other hand
a business attracts customers those who come to their cities even
for the first time.
Data synchronization facility was built in the offline application
to help Offline travel facilitators use the list while they remain
offline. This facility helps the offline TF to provide the discount
list to their customers from their desktop. Reports of the TF
are uploaded, city lists are downloaded periodically.
Administrative module helps the administrator to control every
aspect of the site, including the categories, display; discount
offers in the list, city agents accounts etc.
The solution is complete with a payment gateway which allows Discount
Providers to pay subscriptions fees online. |
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The user interface:
This module is the interface for Travel facilitors to sign up
with CitiDiscounts and avail other services. Through this interface
a TF can register online, make their payments to Citidiscounts
online, can customize the look and feel of the emails that would
be sent to their customers. They can access the information such
as how many users accessed the offer lists and for which cities.
It also gives them an option to add the own logo and brand colours
to the list.
Administrator Module:
Through this interface an administrator at CitiDiscounts can manage
the whole show. That is an administrator creates and approves
accounts for various city Agents, who visits various discount
providers to negotiate the discount offers.
The Super-administrator (SA) Publishes the discount Offer lists
periodically.
The SA Can access financial reports as to how much revenue is
generated by signing up new Travel Facilitators or Discount Providers.
And of course access the amount of revenue generated by renewing
the old contracts with TFs or DPs, and revenue is the revenue
generated by negotiating new offers with existing Discount Providers.
Discount Providers Interface:
This is provided for a DP to make online payments to CitiDiscounts
for publishing their offers on the discounts list which would
be made available to all TFs and further to tourists world over. |
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Advanced Reporting Facility
including no of lists sent through various modes(email,
printout) city wise, travel facilitator wise |
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User friendly Offline Application |
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Fully Powered Administrative
Module |
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| The application is developed using Microsoft's
Active Server Pages (ASP) and SQL server being the Database. Also
for the travel facilitators those who do not have their own sites
Icreon offers an offline application using which they can perform
all the functions which are available online. The offline solution
is designed using Microsoft Visual Basic by taking a component-based
development approach. |
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A word from Alex
Kiernan Managing Director of Cordero Salketing Ltd and
CEO of CitiDiscounts TM
"To be perfectly honest, I have never experienced anything
like what it has been like to work with Icreon. In Today's
world of parasite software delvelopers waiting to take your
money rather than build your dream, Icreon are a breath
of fresh mountain air.
There is something special about Icreon - something to
do with its people and I have learnt so many new skills
even simply working alongside them.
When I met icreon first I had never used CHAT Technology!
Now I base my whole business on it. We have online meetings
with our City Agents based around the world using CHAT and
Voice Technology available for FREE and over the Internet.
We are a global company so this saves us €000s every
month!
I never realized the importance of CHAT when used in development.
What people don't realize is that in CHAT you have time
to think of what you want to say, also you do not need to
deal with strange accents and Icreons English is better
than mine and I am Irish! Also every meeting can be recorded
and relayed to the entire project team or simply kept as
a record.
Anyone developing software by having face to face meetings
is throwing money away and I cannot believe how many companies
still pay so much for communication costs.
Another area, which was very important was the development
of a project specification document. In fact, Icreon took
their time to develop a document, which reflected what I
had requested over numerous meetings. Once I was happy with
the document and the technology set out I signed the document
and work began.
The Specification Document is excellent as it is the roadmap
that we both followed and it is something that I now do
with all my internal processes and of course whenever we
add on a new innovation.
Finally more than any other feature that I liked most about
working with Icreon was their creativity! They not just
take on the project but they live it and this must be where
their creativity comes into play. Take a look at our website
- it is all down to Icreon from images/logos to Colours to look
and feel.
To try and explain what working with Icreon is like in
a few words would be difficult. But if I take a situation
that many people have some sort of experience of such as
having a contractor build some part or all of your house.
Icreon is like having a person build your house and ending
up their best friend!"
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