"Octane is a web design, development and internet marketing consultancy started in June 1999."
My name's Wayne Smallman and I sell ideas that change the way companies do business, usually in the form of novel web applications.
I'm also a writer for business publications (both web and print), as well as a consultant, adviser and trusted ally to my clients.
Back in August 2007, Octane was first introduced to Premier UK, a corporate event management specialist in Coventry, England. A large proportion of their work comes from making UK hotel reservations for employees working within the education sector.
The majority of this work would come in a two month period during the summer. As many as 2,000 bookings would need to be made, stretching their resources.
What if this entire procedure could be automated? That’s where To Book comes in.
To Book is a custom-built web application, written specifically for the needs of Premier UK and their exacting client base.
Now, the delegates sign in, place the bookings, Premier UK staff validate the bookings, after which emails are automatically sent at scheduled intervals to the selected hotels and the delegates, to confirm reservations and bookings respectively.
Every time a booking is edited, a history item is created, which forms an audit trail of who edited which booking, when and why.
There’s also a live search engine, which generates a list of booking results as they type. No need to even press return for a search result page, although that’s still a feature.
Right now, Premier UK are expecting To Book’s capacity to swell to 7,000 bookings over a 5 month period, with more clients joining their service all the time.
The second version of To Book is due to go live in the new year with a brand new invoicing system, which allows Premier UK staff to collate bookings by hotel, calculate totals, VAT amounts, as well as their own commission. And finally, they get to send the invoice as a PDF attachment in an email to the hotels.
To Book was and still is primarily an efficiency drive, which can be said of most web applications. In that respect, we (both Premier UK and myself) achieved much more than we’d ever hoped for.
To Book has a wonderful future ahead of it, mostly borne out of identifying and then incorporating solutions to the different needs of both Premier UK and their client base.
See for yourself the benefits of a robust, secure web application for your business.
For more information, or if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to call or contact Octane today!
