Construction of Marketing Management Information System of Travel Agency Based on Customer Relationship Management

Transcription

1 Journal of Convergence Information Technology Construction of Marketing Management Information System of Travel Agency Based on Customer Relationship Management School of Management, Xiamen University,Xiamen,China doi: /jcit.vol5.issue8.27 Abstract The theory of customer relationship management has been gradually penetrated into all levels of enterprise management. As a close business with customers, travel agency should focus on customer relationship management, which is very important. This paper attempts to combine the concept of customer relationship management and the processes of traditional travel agency marketing to construct the system architecture, considering the actual situation and specific requirements of a travel agency, combining with norms and standards of the management of travel agencies industry, as well as, using the current popular system architecture B/S (Browser/Sever) Mode. By extensively studying the theory of software engineering, database theory and object-oriented languages and Web programming, management systems analysis and design process of travel agency marketing is discussed in detail based CRM. Keywords: CRM (customer relationship management), Travel agency, Management systems, Database 1. Introduction World Tourism Organization has released a report: Travel E-commerce accounted for 25% of all travel transactions in the accounts for half of all e-commerce. We can say that tourism's network operation will be an inevitable development of the industry or already a reality. With a large number of tourists spending on the Web, do we still holding large amounts of materials for their tourism business? No, this low efficiency of the traditional mode of operation has been unable to meet the requirements of the society. E-commerce requires us to work with networks to adapt to meeting the customers requirements for diversification, personalized service, so that the conception of customer first can be come true. Customer relationship management is essential, and implementing CRM in the travel agencies has become a strategic investment of a well-known international and domestic tourism enterprise. With China's successful accession to WTO, China's tourism industry will also face more severe challenges. Foreign famous tourist brand and advanced management will bring a strong impact on domestic tourism. Integrating advantageous resources and developing its own core competencies are urgent needs. Only full utilized of advanced network technology to carry on the construction of travel agencies, could the travel agencies enhance their ability to participate in international competition. Despite diversity in the literature on managing call centers, a common theme has been to show how work intensification and workplace surveillance is achieved primarily through the time and target pressures that are facilitated by technology (Taylor & Bain, 2005). The gaze of the electronic boards displaying their unceasing demands on staff combined with tele-computing and the automatic distribution of calls (ACD) ensures that backlogs are always driving performance. This is perpetuated through the accumulation of electronic databases that capture in digital form the behavior of customers and customer service representatives (CSRs) at the point of interaction in service/sales encounters. It is capable of translating a whole series of material and symbolic interactive events into a digitized set of numbers, categories or forms. In the travel agency business processes throughout the enterprise such as tourism and the production, marketing, quality control, marketing plans, pricing, human resources, scheduling, service and finance, as a complete value chain of tourism enterprises, tourism product sale is a core business, whether the core business is good or bad depends on the market and the customer. Therefore, 241

2 Construction of Marketing Management Information System of Travel Agency Based on Customer Relationship Management customers become one of the most important resources for travel agents, for which, customer relationship management process becomes an indispensable and important part of travel agents. The system design goal takes the customer relationship management as the key factor, contract management and marketing program management as the core, supplemented by price management, production planning management, financial management, to form complete marketing system of management systems for a travel agency based CRM.This system can realize a complete business process including customers important customers sales order marketing plan production planning marketing. See Figure1. Customers Important customers Sales order Marketing plan Production planning and Marketing Figure1. Marketing system of management systems for a travel agency 2. System Requirements Analysis and Design The Requirements Analysis of System Economic globalization and the rapid development of technology have changed the competitive pattern of travel agency, and competition direction was changed from pressure of price competition to the value of around the customer. The travel agencies who grasp the needs of customers, retaining customers, will be able to win the competition in brutal campaign. This situation also has changed the nature of the tourism product sales, and now sales staff must give the rapid response to customer's needs and problems, with the ability to build customer relationships. The travel agency must be customer-centric, market-oriented and thus attract more new customers, retain more customers and strive for greater profits. Travel agencies need to focus on market segmentation, through the CRM (customer relationship management systems) to fully enhance the tourism product marketing and management capacity to deal with ever-changing customer demand. The core of CRM is the difference, so the travel agents need to find the differences and provide differentiated customer service. In order to develop a successful solution and the effective use of customer relationship management (CRM), travel agencies which build the necessary infrastructure platform for CRM should normally be under two ways: Management improvement is the basis for the success of CRM, while technology will help to improve the efficiency of customer relationship management The design goals of System CRM-based travel agency marketing management system is an integrated systems engineering, whose goal is to view the CRM philosophy as a guide, as well as, the application of computer technology, network technology, technology to i ntegrate the cash flow, logistics, flow of travel agencies in marketing management activities. 242

3 Journal of Convergence Information Technology In addition, the management thinking of modern process reengineering is applied to establish a functioning travel agency's own system. Ultimately, customer is viewed as clues to be analyzed to develop and retain customers for travel agents to provide a full range of management perspective. By the analysis of corporate marketing, sales, service exchange links with customers a full range, tracking and understanding of customer needs, multi-angle quantitative and collaborative management, the overall strategy for travel agents can be made scientific decisions. Through the travel agents a comprehensive business process management, the business costs can be reduced. By enhancing customer satisfaction and loyalty, travel agents can increase sales, optimize profitability, and, ultimately, profit and development objectives can be realized. 3. Main modules function of the system The Description of System Function CRM-based travel agency marketing management system functions include system management, sales management, customer management. Sales management mainly includes price management, contract management, and project management. Customer relationship management mainly includes customer management, contact management, statistical analysis. Systems management mainly includes user management, password management, and rights management Customer Relationship Management Customer relationship management is to manage clients basic, contacts, and sales opportunities; to evaluate the customers situation, contacts, cases, potential customers, and sales opportunities. Sales department of the travel agency inputs the users business, including: customer name, address, telephone, bank, account number, tax ID, their districts, industry, the level of assess, nature of an enterprise, enterprise scale, cooperative experience, credit rating. The customer level assessment require the four aspects of customers, including the business license, tax registration certificate, legal person code certificate, business license, according to the evaluation criteria for customer input rating. In addition, the client's data is to realize the functions of changing, modifying, deleting, and inquiring. Flow chart is shown in Figure 2. Contact adjunction Customer adjunction Customer modifying Contact modifying Module of customer relationship management Customer inquiring Contact querying Customers assess adjunction Customers assess querying Customers assess modifying Figure 2. Flow chart of customer relationship management 243

4 Construction of Marketing Management Information System of Travel Agency Based on Customer Relationship Management Price Management Price management remains a high-potential approach for a travel agency to identify and capture new margin opportunities. Today the travel agencies are faced with the challenge of managing sometimes infinite combinations of tourism products, terms, policies, customers, channels, and promotions which are far too complex to be handled by manual analysis techniques. As a consequence price management is either almost non-existing or subjectively decided. With relatively small changes to pricing and pricing policies, price management solutions not only enable companies to be more efficient in discount or rebate executions but in fact offer them improvement potential in margins and revenue growth. There are a total of 5 different price lists for customers to choose in price management of this system, including the price list of travel routes, the internal price sheet of travel agents, the price list of tourism products, the price list of ancillary tourism products, insurance, the price list of taxes and fees. In every price list, query functionality can be provided for customers to choose various types of queries in different ways. Sales department is responsible for the price of entry, price adjustment, and price review. Flow chart is shown in Figure 3. Inner Prices subject to change Price input Price Audit Price list External User query Contract Management Figure 3. Flow chart of price management Contract management or contract administration is the management of contracts made with customers, vendors, partners, or employees. Contract management of a travel agency includes negotiating the terms and conditions with other tourism enterprises(such as hotels, scenic spot development companies, tourism transport companies, etc.) in contracts and ensuring compliance with the terms and conditions, as well as documenting and agreeing on any changes that may arise during its implementation or execution. It can be summarized as the process of systematically and efficiently managing contract creation, execution, and analysis for the purpose of maximizing financial and operational performance and minimizing ri sk. The system of contract management includes sales contracts and fee contract. Contract management module includes contract entry, query and review. Modified functionality should be provided in the contract input, while the functions of adding and deleting should be provided in the contract queries. During the period of the assessment of the contract, the function of the contract should be provided for the functional departments to review. When the assessment is passed, the adoption of a formal contract to this contract is taken as the conduct of subsequent business processes; otherwise, the contract should be modified. A contract is a legally binding agreement between the parties identified in the agreement to fulfill all the terms and conditions outlined in the agreement. A prerequisite requirement for the enforcement of a contract, amongst other things, is the condition that all the parties to the 244

5 Journal of Convergence Information Technology contract accept the terms of the claimed contract. Historically, this was most commonly achieved through signature or performance, but in many jurisdictions - especially with the advance of electronic commerce - the forms of acceptance have expanded to include various forms of electronic signature for travel agencies Program Management Program management of a travel agency is the process of managing several related projects, often with the intention of improving the profits of a travel agency. Travel agency marketing plan management is on the basis of annual marketing plan, quarterly marketing plan and monthly marketing program management. According to the view that programs deliver outcomes but projects deliver outputs, program management of a travel agency is concerned with doing the right projects. The program manager of a travel agency has been described as playing chess and keeping the overview in mind. The pieces of tourism products should be used or sacrificed being the projects. And also according to this view above, successful programs deliver on time, to budget and to specification, whereas successful programs deliver long term improvements to an organization. Improvements are usually identified through benefits of a travel agency. An organization should select the group of programs that most take it towards its strategic aims whilst remaining within its capacity to deliver the changes. On the other hand, the view that programs are simply large projects or a set of projects of a travel agency allows that a program may need to deliver tangible benefits quickly for a travel agency. Travel Agencies marketing program management is further divided into plan modifying, plan increasing, plans for the deletion, plans for the inquiries, and other specific functions. Travel agency marketing plan management module diagram is shown in Figure 4. Marketing Contract Annual Plan Quarterly Plan Monthly Plan Daily Plan 4. Database Design Marketing Plan Management Figure 4. Travel agency plan management module diagram 245

6 Construction of Marketing Management Information System of Travel Agency Based on Customer Relationship Management Customer relationship management database Customer Relationship Management is a continuous process of continuously strengthening exchanges with customers, and continuously understanding the customers needs and continuously improving the products and services to meet the needs of customers. The connotation of CRM is that the travel agents, who use technology (IT) and Internet technology, achieve integrated marketing for tourists is based on the core of the tourists to achieve marketing technology and management. Customer relationship management focused communication with customers, therefore, the business of travel agents, is a customer-centric, rather than the traditional product-or marketoriented. To facilitate communication with customers, customer relationship management can provide customers with a variety of communication channels. Customer relationship management is to manage the clients basic, contacts, sales opportunities to evaluate the customer credit rating to consistently find significant customer. Customer Relationship Management database contains three data tables which are the clients basic sheet (Kh-jbxx), contact form (Lxr-xx) and Client Assessment Form (Kh-pg), and E-R diagram is shown in Figure 5. Figure 5. The E-R diagram of customer relationship management database Travel agency marketing plan management database A Database Management System (DBMS) is a set of computer programs that controls the creation, maintenance, and the use of a database, which allows organizations to place control of database development in the hands of database administrators (DBAs) and other specialists. A DBMS is also a system software package that helps the use of integrated collection of data records and files known as databases. It allows different user application programs to easily access the same database. DBMSs may use any of a variety of database models, such as the network model or relational model. In terms of a travel agency which has large systems, a DBMS allows tourism customers and other software to store and retrieve the tourism data in a structured way. Instead of having to write computer programs to extract tourism, tourism customers can ask simple questions in a query language. Thus, many DBMS packages provide Fourth-generation programming language (4GLs) and other application development features, which help to specify the logical organization for a database 246

7 Data Mining Journal of Convergence Information Technology and access and use the within a database. It provides facilities for controlling data access, enforcing data integrity, managing concurrency, and restoring the database from backups. A DBMS also provides the ability to logically present database to users. Overall, sales, customer service and business intelligence for the auxiliary functions of the travel agency marketing system, in a sense, it is full of marketing ideas as the core of CRM. This new database marketing system is explored shown in Figure 6. Production Department Finance Department Marketing Decisions Service Target Department Customer Contact Center Marketing Department Data Reduction Knowledge Model Sale Department Data Collection Management Sales Channel Customer Database Editing Import Data Warehouse Market Figure 6. Travel Agency Database Marketing System The database marketing system is of such a system: marketing, customer service department collect customer data through customer contact centers and various sales channels to compile the customer database of travel agency s marketing department through data arrangement. The marketing department of travel agency should observe, count and analyze the customer data, if necessary, the part of the data will be in-depth analyzed and processed such as data mining by streamlining the conversion into the data warehouse to yield valuable knowledge through the visual representation of the model to the marketing department. The marketing department of travel agency synthesizes these findings and the productive sector, financial sector, integration to develop the next phase of marketing strategy to send to each sector as the reference for its activities. Travel agency s marketing plan includes annual marketing plan management (contract), quarter marketing plan management (contract), and monthly marketing plan management (contract). The corresponding data sheets are respectively the travel agency sales contracts sheet (LY xsht), tourist routes and tourism product sheet (LY xx), the annual marketing plan travel agency table (LY ndcl), travel agency marketing plan quarterly Form (LY jdcl), monthly travel agency Marketing Plan Form (LY ydcl), travel agencies monthly marketing schedule sheet(ly yxsl). Also, the basic clients sheet (Kh jbxx) is needed, and E-R diagram is shown in Figure

8 Construction of Marketing Management Information System of Travel Agency Based on Customer Relationship Management Figure 7. The E-R diagram of marketing project management database 5. System management and security System Management There are a total of three sub-modules in the system management, namely, user management, password management, and permission management. There is mainly the user's basic in the user management, providing users to view feature, and the system administrators have the permissions of amending and deleting. Password management is primarily made the available functionality to the users to modify passwords and check password. Permission Management is only available to the system administrator to set user permissions and modify the function, and only the system administrator can modify the operation of the user's permissions. Data adjunctions, data deletion, data modification, data inquiry, data review, the five kinds of permissions are according to the user so that they have part of the nature of the work until all the permissions. User permissions database apply bit numeric field to the five kinds of permissions, the numeric field value are 0 or 1, for example, the parameters del is set to delete operations, if 0 is for no rights, while 1 is for rights. In general, users can only have the permissions of viewing their own, but they can not modify System Safety The security risks of the solutions of IIS + ASP.NET+ SQL Server are mainly from the operating system, development platform, as well as seamless connection between back-end database issues. Others include web page design in the process of safety awareness, the database's own security and so on. The following are several ways to solve security issues. (1) Using 128-bit SSL protocol for transport layer encryption controls. SSL protocol is located in TC / PIP protocols and the various application layer protocols for data communications to provide security support, which has now been widely used in Web browser and server authentication, as well as encrypted data transmission. 248

9 Journal of Convergence Information Technology (2) Windows-based accounts of the IIS security certification system is applied to ensuring that system services are not illegal calls. This measure is mainly carried out through the IIS restricted access to the user settings to ensure that the user has specific permissions to access system services. Through this measure, travel agencies construction and management of technology bodies to a specific user or system to provide system access accounts, in large part to ensure the system's security. (3) Use the online proof of identity of users logging, such as the E - mail and password, through the appropriate identification procedures to log operating. If the system needs to request identification, ASP. NET can send one Cookie that contains evidence of the identity. The next request is contained in the header of this Cookie, in order to prove that the authentication has passed without further authentication. Note that the form itself does not play a role in authentication, but it is provided as a means to obtain user identity on the E - mail and password, which will be able to achieve the processing of user identity authentication. The operating mechanism of entire user authentication process is shown in Figure8. Request Access Correctly Configured on the IIS Authentication Cookie Login N Authorization Process Y Authorize? N Cookie Verified Denied Test Authority Authentication Cookie N Y Access to Resources Figure 8. Web Database Resource Security Access Mechanism Schematic (4) In the SQL Server to limit Web user's permissions: In some of the SQL Server attack, the database login account with high privileges is often applied to the database data in illicit operations, therefore, It is necessary to restrict the SQL Server user logon account permissions. There are 3 types of permissions in SQL Server: object permissions, statement permissions, and implicit permission statement. In the system's Web server, all database operations are prepared in the form to store the process. And for Web users to set up a call to the database only through stored procedures on the server to perform certain database operations role, instead of allowing direct access to other database objects and statements. 6. Conclusions The system is to primarily evaluate the major clients and key customers, and tap potential 249

10 Construction of Marketing Management Information System of Travel Agency Based on Customer Relationship Management customers and markets by managing, analyzing and tracking the clients of travel agencies. And on this basis, tourism products & tourism routs management, contract management, price management and marketing program management can be carried on to achieve a leading travel agency in marketing and sales management of new clients as the leading travel agency business processes. The customer relationship management and marketing contract management are both the major components of the system throughout the system, and then the price management, program management and financial management are supplemented, forming a complete system of a CRM-based travel agency marketing management system. The development of this system adopted today's popular BPS structure, taking ASP. NET technology is viewed as the main development of technology, because ASP.NET platform is of many advantages, such as low cost, security, flexibility and scalability, providing the basic conditions for development of the ERP system in future. 7. References [1] Berson et al., 2000 A. Berson, K. Thearling and S. Smith, Building Data Mining Applications for CRM, Digital (2000). [2] Boon et al., 2002 Boon, O., Brian, C., Craig, P., Conceptualising the requirements of CRM from an organisational perspective: a review of the literature. In: Proceedings of 7th Australian Workshop on Requirements Engineering AWRE; 2 3 December; Melbourne; Australia. [3] Chalmeta and Grangel, 2003 R. Chalmeta and R. Grangel, ARDIN extension for virtual enterprise integration, Journal of Systems and Software 67 (2003), pp [4] Chalmeta and Grangel, 2005 R. Chalmeta and R. Grangel, Performance measurement systems for virtual enterprise integration, Computer Integrated Manufacturing (2005), pp [5] Chalmeta et al., 2001 R. Chalmeta, C. Campos and R. Grangel, References architectures for enterprise integration, Journal of Systems and Software 57 (2001) (3), pp [6] Curry and Curry, 2000 J. Curry and A. Curry, The Customer Marketing Method: How to Implement and Profit from Customer Relationship Management, Free Press (2000). [7] Dyche, 2001 J. Dyche, The CRM Handbook: A Business Guide to Customer Relationship Management (first ed.), Addison-Wesley (2001). [8] Greenberg, 2001 P. Greenberg, CRM at the Speed of Light: Capturing and Keeping Customers in Internet Real Time, McGraw-Hill Osborne Media (2001). [9] Hoffberg et al., 2003 K. Hoffberg, B. Frei and K. Corcoran, Firing Up The Customer: Aligning Brand, Strategy and Technology to Deliver the Extraordinary Customer Experience (first ed.), McGraw-Hill Trade (2003). [10] Injazz and Karen, 2004 Injazz, D., Karen, P Understanding customer relationship management (CRM). People, process and technology. Available from: < [11] Kallinikos, 2007 Kallinikos, J. (2007). Farewell to constructivism: technology and contextembedded action. London School of Economics. This is an updated version of Kallinicos, J. (2004). Recalcitrant technology: Cross-contextual systems and context-embedded action. In C. Avgerou, C. Ciborra, & F. Land (Eds.), The social study of and communication technology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, [12] Kennerley and Neely, 2001 M. Kennerley and A. Neely, Enterprise resource planning: analysing the impact, Integrated Manufacturing Systems 12 (2001) (2), pp [13] Kenneth, 2002 C. Kenneth, The Relational Enterprise: Moving Beyond CRM to Maximize All Your Business Relationships, John Wiley & Sons (2002). [14] Knights, 2002 Knights, D. (2002). Writing organization analysis into Foucault. Organization, 9(4), Reprinted in S. Linstead (Ed.), Organizations and postmodern thought (pp ). London: Sage, [15] Knights and Jones, 2007 D. Knights and B. Jones, Outsourcing [the] economy to India: Identity, ideology and idiosyncrasy in offshoring, International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy 27 (11/12) (2007). [16] Knights and McCabe, 2003 D. Knights and D. McCabe, Governing through teamwork: 250

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