Brittany Ferries wanted to address a problem common to most firms: too much paperwork. The shipping line deals with travel agents of all sizes, from large companies such as Thomas Cook and Lunn Poly to one-shop high street travel agents.

It sells directly through its reservation call centre, as well as over the Web, and acts as a tour operator selling holidays to France, Spain, Ireland and the UK.

Brittany also wanted to streamline the monthly delivery of statements to travel agents to cut its costs and improve the service to clients.

Company accountant Graham Harrison explained the problem. "Each month Brittany had to take an extract from its sales ledger, print out invoices to each travel agent, check them, stuff them in envelopes and then distribute them. Clients were not getting statements until five or six days after the end of the month," he said, adding that the process was taking up to eight man days a month.

The problem was compounded because Brittany takes payment from travel agents by direct debit. This meant its accounts department had to manually check any queries from agents about their statements to ensure the correct amount was withdrawn from agents' bank accounts. This resulted in pressure on the accounts staff each month to meet the deadline.

Listening in

Solving the problem began 18 months ago. "We had been looking at how we could get statements to clients more effectively," explained Harrison. "AXS-One was already providing us with an archiving product and overheard our problem. It took the initiative and came up with a prototype solution."

Brittany was using AXS-One's AXSPoint Central archiving tool to generate reports. The new solution, AXSPoint Travel, takes that archive information and presents it via a website, so travel agents can look at statements online. It allows agents to make queries electronically and lets Brittany automate the responses.

The system went live in April. Travel agents can use AXSPoint Travel to garner more details about bookings, such as passenger name, date of departure, booking references and commission amounts.

Andy Richings, IT manager at Brittany, said: "We had been looking at other alternatives such as email or fax to distribute statements. But the proactive approach of AXSOne, using the internet, proved to be a close fit with the systems we already had in place. We did not need to make any changes to the back-end system."

Brittany now has two websites. One is for the public to check the availability of crossings and book online. The other is for the sole use of travel agents and tour operators, and is password protected. Users of the private site with second-level passwords can access their firms' statements online.

Security & savings

The company says it is satisfied with the two-layer password protection that safeguards the statements, but that it constantly reassesses security.

"It was a straightforward implementation," said Richings. The only change Brittany made was to install two web servers. Previously, the corporate website was hosted by a local Web outsourcing specialist called Goss Interactive.

The public website is still managed externally, but the statement screens that the travel agents access via the internet are held within the Brittany network. If they had been outsourced, Brittany would have had to outsource the existing AXSPoint Central database that feeds those statements to the Web.

"We could have outsourced the entire system, but we felt that keeping part of it in-house gave us greater control," explained Richings. "Security was also a factor."

The firm estimates paper statements to cost between 70p and £2.70 each to print and post. It expects to save £35,000 a year thanks to the web-based system.

Brittany also pointed out that it has benefited in other areas from AXSOne taking the initiative. Systems accountant John Napton Said: "In future, we will speak more openly with our software suppliers."

The firm is considering extending the Web-based statements system to its freight business, which carries goods between the UK, Ireland and the continent.

www.axsone.com
www.brittanyferries.com
www.gossinteractive.co.uk