@ MN Explore Minnesota Tourism. Explore Minnesota Tourism Database/Website Project

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1 @ MN Explore Minnesota Tourism Explore Minnesota Tourism Database/Website Project NASCIO 2012 Recognition Award Category: Digital Government: Government to Business Contact: Peggy Nasby, Operations & Technology Manager, State of Minnesota Project Initiation: December 2009 Project Completion: December 2010

2 Executive Summary Explore Minnesota Tourism (EMT) is the state s official tourism promotion agency. The mission of the agency is to increase travel to and within the state of Minnesota. Tourism is a major industry in Minnesota, accounting for over 235,000 jobs and 17% of the state s sales tax revenues. Total sales in this sector exceed $11 billion per year. EMT s stakeholder base is comprised of over 2,300 lodging properties and campgrounds, and nearly 3,000 attractions, museums, outdoor recreation service providers, destination marketing organizations, arts organizations and event coordinators. EMT serves these businesses by striving to be the premier source of tourism information in the state, and disseminating that information to potential travelers. EMT provides a number of other related government-to-business services, such as the collection and distribution of consumer sales leads. The information systems used to accomplish this mission are complex. Prior to the completion of this project, EMT s core database and related applications had been in use since September, This database and its many utilities collectively referred to as Journey - were highly visible to the public, crucial to the Minnesota tourism industry, and the source of information for a large portion of EMT s marketing strategies. A major component of the Journey system was Minnesota s cutting-edge self-service extranet, available to several thousand business owners and organizations to manage their listings with Explore Minnesota. Other vital pieces involved an in-house travel counseling service, a full order processing and inventory system for hundreds of travel brochures, and the importing of ad sales leads from dozens of sources. EMT also maintains an interactive website, which features comprehensive, high-quality travel information. While the website audience is primarily consumers, the Minnesota businesses and organizations listed are EMT s stakeholders, and the promotion of these businesses is the mission of this agency. The purpose of this project was ultimately to develop and implement a single database, with improved web-based applications and other functionality, usable by a wider range of EMT staff; to develop a high-quality consumer travel information website with a flexible content-management system; to develop and implement an improved extranet for use by the tourism industry; and to provide the state with a long-range support and maintenance plan for this database, its applications, and the website. 2

3 Business Problem and Solution Business Problem The state s role in tourism promotion is an important one, and the stakeholder base in Minnesota is diverse touching on a wide variety of business types and affecting every community in every county, throughout the entire state, during all months of the year. Management of tourism data involves the collection and maintenance of tourism property listings, and the delivery of travel information to consumers. It requires carefully planned information infrastructures, and a system that can support large numbers of users simultaneously. As stated in the Executive Summary, EMT s core database and related applications had been in use since September, The underlying Journey database itself was a complex SQL database, and while some adjustments to the tables and data structures were definitely needed, the most pressing issue was with the applications and programs that utilized the database. The multiple technologies used in these applications were obsolete. The system had become so fragile and dated that the in-house users were unable to even update their operating systems and web browsers to current versions, forcing the agency to maintain two different environments for an extended period of time. EMT also maintained an interactive public consumer website, providing travel information to consumers and a chance for businesses to market themselves. A portion of the travel information data used on the public website was fed from the Journey database, but there were extensive additional pieces of data that are used exclusively by the websites, and were stored in disparate databases. The website was and is a source of significant revenue through paid advertising, and improved data structures and on-line tools were needed to manage these paid ads and related content. The ExploreMinnesota.com website was operated separately from Journey, under contracts with outside vendors for development and maintenance, and separately for hosting. The website was fed continuously with database information from Journey through a data transformation service (DTS) application. This project was expected to integrate the database directly with the website. In the previous system, Minnesota businesses had to maintain up to three different login IDs and passwords, and had to manage their paid content separately from their free content, even though the listings were displayed on the same page on the same website. It was extremely confusing and cumbersome, to EMT employees and especially to the businesses that used the system. 3

4 Additionally, prior to this project, the Journey application was not available widely to all EMT staff. Mailing lists, customer relations management tools, improved marketing reports and interactive or on-demand reporting, real-time inventory and other useful functionality needed to be made available to all staff, as needed, with user-friendly rolebased security and approval layers in place. M are currently provided through an inter-agency agreement with MN.IT Department of Employment & Economic Development (MN.IT@DEED). This project required close interaction with MN.IT s staff to ensure a smooth transition of systems and migration of data from the existing system to the new system. Solution The project manager at EMT developed a project plan and a scope statement to allow the agency to carefully assess the business objectives, project approach, timeline and estimated budget, and to ensure that appropriate staff people would be involved at the levels required. The scope statement identified potential risk factors and mitigations, as well as clearly outlined roles, and a steering committee. A request for proposals (RFP) was issued, with the goal of entering into a professional/technical contract with a vendor to design, develop and implement a combined database, and related applications to collect, maintain and disseminate multiple types of information. The RFP process in Minnesota state government is very clearly outlined, and the project manager was responsible for making sure that all aspects of the vendor selection were in compliance with the related laws and policies. Thirty-five responses were received, and a committee of six staff people reviewed them. Because the project was very technical in nature, the selection process was very detailed and time-consuming. Ultimately, EMT needed to choose a vendor that could provide a solid database solution and back-room applications as well as an appealing, strong-performing consumer travel planning website. The firm BarkleyREI was chosen to assist EMT with this project. BarkleyREI specializes in digital tourism marketing, and had experience well-matched with EMT s needs. The database solution that we agreed upon was a completely rebuilt SQL database and a tourism manager extranet system, which accomplished EMT s goal of bringing together content and data from multiple legacy databases, eliminating a large amount of user confusion and duplication of effort, both by state staff at EMT and by the thousands of industry participants. The new Tourism Manager web-based extranet system includes easy-to-use tutorials and has been described as very intuitive by our tourism business end-users. 4

5 Our new system implements numerous best practices and workflow improvements, such as automatic ing of lost or forgotten passwords and the ability to download batches of sales leads per business for a given date range. The businesses that use the self-service system to maintain their tourism listings have praised the ease of use of the system, and have had very little difficulty using the features. When the new extranet system was coming online, EMT reached out to the Minnesota tourism industry in several ways prior to launch. EMT sent direct communications to all of the business participants, featured articles in industry newsletters, and had staff available for telephone assistance in making the transition. Following the core database planning and development, a robust public consumer website running against the new database was then designed and built. The consumer website is one of the state s most visible efforts in marketing tourism on behalf of Minnesota businesses. In order to achieve success in this project, EMT proactively sought industry input, during the discovery phase, and at times that key decisions were being made on design and important features. The governor-appointed Minnesota Tourism Council was asked to review and provide input at several junctures. Developers from BarkleyREI attended multiple meetings with this council, a well-rounded representation of the diverse business base that is the tourism industry in Minnesota. In addition, EMT formed a small task force of industry representatives, separate from the Council, who met and helped with decisions on relevant areas of the website. Regional association groups were consulted as well. The system components were intentionally launched in phases, beginning with the extranet system in November This allowed business owners and advertisers to prepare their listings with the new features that were available to them, such as social media links, video, consumer reviews, and more, prior to the go-live of the website. In early December, 2010, was pushed live with the new design and all of the new features. An in-house travel counseling and order-processing system followed a few weeks later. This project also produced a flexible framework, which allowed the state to subsequently launch segment-specific websites for international and group-tour travel trade professionals, meeting planners and sports marketing audiences. EMT s ongoing role in the project includes a project manager, and a team of four employees who work on the maintenance and enhancement of the applications and the website in various capacities, as a major, but not full-time, part of their positions. 5

6 There are many end-users of the system components within EMT, in addition to the thousands of tourism businesses and organizations with login credentials to manage their own data. Significance This project significantly streamlined workflow for state employees who manage the data and behind-the-scenes systems. It has entirely automated some tasks that previously required an employee to handle, such as providing lost or forgotten passwords, the downloading of sales leads, and reporting on the performance of advertising. The new system automatically performs several data archiving tasks that used to be done manually. The database of customers, which exceeds one million records, is archived as historical information on a regular basis. The system also detects and inactivates business listings when they are expired. This creates efficiencies in the database itself, and also ensures that the information provided to travelers on the consumer website is timely and accurate. The project has also provided Minnesota s tourism business stakeholders with a much improved workflow, and a one-stop-shop for managing their free listing, paid enhancements to their listing, deals and special offers, and other advertising. Statistical information is available to advertisers in the same, single online resource. EMT no longer contracts with multiple vendors to host the various aspects of the system and its on-line components. We have a single contractor providing support, development and hosting for the applications, the databases and all of the website products. This has removed what used to be a problem area for EMT, when it was hard to identify the responsible vendor to correct a problem with the systems. In short, it has removed any finger-pointing or passing the buck when problems occur. In the RFP process, EMT sought fixed-bid pricing on the development work, to help control costs and eliminate scope-creep, which is often a risk in information systems and website development projects. EMT and its contractor made an effort to incorporate cost-effective solutions in many aspects of the project. For example, rather than developing in-house resources for mapping and video-sharing, EMT integrated available no-cost technologies such as Google mapping, Bing mapping and YouTube video storage, into the public-facing website as well as in the administrative modules. The new system taps into SQL Server s built-in geography and spatial data capabilities. This has allowed Explore Minnesota s travel information to be placed precisely on maps, in the full control of the business owners. Accurate radius and location-based 6

7 searches are now available a big improvement over the previous technologies that were in use. Popular social media features are also an important aspect of the website, meeting the agency s need to be fresh and timely, while containing costs. Benefits It is EMT s philosophy that the best way the state can serve its tourism business stakeholders is by providing consistently high-quality travel information to consumers. This website receives more than 2.7 million visits per year, and promotes over five thousand businesses, organizations and events throughout Minnesota. The website is entirely self-supporting through advertising sales revenues. EMT offers businesses a wide variety of opportunities to upgrade their listings, place graphic ads throughout the site, and be featured in search results in more prominent ways. Sufficient revenues are realized through industry participation to not only support the product itself, but to allow continuous improvements and some marketing of the site. Marketing efforts help maintain and increase traffic levels and visibility of the site, which results in additional sales at tourism businesses and in their local communities. The funding appropriated to EMT for tourism promotion requires the agency to raise a specified dollar amount in cash and in-kind contributions from private sector businesses. This project has consistently proven to be a major source of revenue that allows EMT to meet this matching funds mandate, while giving the industry stakeholders a measurable, solid return on their investment. Many of our advertisers and stakeholders tell us that ExploreMinnesota.com is the greatest source of referrals to their business. For example, the owner of the Deutsche Strasse Bed & Breakfast in New Ulm, Minnesota tells us, Exploreminnesota.com is my #1 referral source. The traffic provided by Explore Minnesota Tourism has been a great help to us in growing our business. Tourism clearly benefits all Minnesota businesses and citizens through a stronger economy, and a richer quality of life. ExploreMinnesota.com is extremely proud to be an important part of this. 7