Tourism Ireland is responsible for marketing the island of Ireland overseas as a holiday destination. They employ around 150 staff across more than twenty markets, including: GB, US, China, India and Brazil.
In 2015, Tourism Ireland issued a tender detailing their requirement for a new Contact Management Tool (CMT), the main function of which was to capture contact information across the disciplines of Overseas Travel Trade, Business Tourism and Media Contacts, and provide a mechanism for tracking these communications.
Key to Tourism Ireland’s approach was the wish to operate as a partnership with the chosen platform supplier.
System Requirements
It was important that the chosen system synchronised with the existing Tourism Ireland single sign-on facility and that it provided robust back up and disaster recovery. Because of the broad reach of T.I.’s technology estate, the new CMT needed to be available on a range of technologies including PC, laptop, tablet and phone.
Data entry in multiple languages was also a key requirement. Therefore, the tool needed to include the ability to enter special characters as markets are located in various countries around the world.
In terms of contact management, one of the most important functions was the ability for staff to link contact data to its respective company, along with any communication, date and time etc. The CMT should also be able to copy the communication details across multiple contacts to help save time and increase efficiency.
Because of the dynamic nature of T.I.’s operations, staff need to add, edit and sometimes archive data as required. In addition, data fields should be configurable as mandatory, or optional and made available in a number of formats including free text, lists, tick-box and multiple choice dropdowns.
Event management
Events and Campaigns are crucial to Tourism Irelands’ marketing activities. Because of this, the system should provide the ability to create events, add contacts from different companies and manage attendee responses. Requirements in this area also included the ability to capture event name, location, timing, and description.
Reporting
Various reports were required for market users and management, depending on their need. The data stored in the system needed to be readily searchable, with the ability to view reports on screen and also have the ability to export to Excel. Required reports include, for instance; companies by type and event attendees.
Contract management
T.I. asked for details of the overall project management approach, including the production of a comprehensive blueprint for implementation. This included a detailed project management plan, change management plan, communications plan listing key stakeholders involved in the project, together with a description of the suppliers approach to testing, system acceptance and release management.
Working with Tourism Ireland’s security staff, the supplier would need to demonstrate that the tool was adequately secure, with testing and password management delivered to Tourism Ireland’s standards.
Solution
Bxp software was chosen as Tourism Ireland’s partner for this project for a number of reasons, not least because of: • Our existing toolbox, which could fulfil all of Tourism Irelands’ needs • Our demonstrable experience of delivering similar assignments bxp is a pure SaaS solution and was devised from the ground up to work on any device, from anywhere in the world. It can handle any language that is HTML compliant under the character set UTF-8.
The ability to seamlessly link databases is just part of the functionality available within bxp. In order to sub divide data, businesses can be placed in specific categories with access restricted by log-on and / or group permissions. In addition, bxp was designed to be a self-service system, i.e. no need for internal IT support, making updates and changes to functionality easy to manage by Tourism Ireland IT staff themselves.
Event Management
Using an existing function, bxp has made it very simple for Tourism Ireland to add and record events which are displayed in a calendar. From within the calendar users can add attendees simply by clicking the relevant event. Managing attendees can be achieved through attendee lists on screen, or through data and statistical reports, generated using our Data Profiling reporting suite.
Reporting
Bxp can generate reports on any and all system data, by timescale, in any of TI’s databases, e.g. contacts, companies, markets, and events. These reports can be viewed on screen or exported to Excel at the click of a button. T.I. can manipulate any data held within the system to produce any report they require. Data is searchable by any field and can be grouped by specific criteria. In addition, data can be exported to .xls, .csv and xml at the click of a button, formatted in a way that is immediately familiar and understandable to staff.
Contract management
We are widely experienced in delivering tailored projects, for which we use the ADDIE [Analysis – Design – Development – Implementation – Evaluation] model.
Having thoroughly scoped the project with Tourism Ireland management, we created a detailed project plan that included:
- Analysis
- Design
- Development
- Implementation
- Evaluation
Whilst Tourism Ireland maintain their own device security, all aspects of data security are managed by us. We follow industry best practice processes and procedures, so much so that bxp is now as safe as online banking.
Conclusion
Successfully delivering projects like this is not just about matching functionality to requirement. It’s about working closely with the client and understanding individual user’s daily needs and challenges. In this way we get a ‘behind the scenes’ view of a client’s operations and can in turn add value to their business. Putting it all together, this means the client will own a unique, tailor made system that exceeds their original brief.
The system that bxp software have built for us is demonstrating real efficiencies for Tourism Ireland and the bxp team are a pleasure to deal with.
Jackie Cunningham, IT Manager, Tourism Ireland
