The tour operator is one of the leading tourism companies in Germany. Its main activity is purchasing, organizing and promoting vacation trips.
The client asked neusta enterprise services to take on the role of business owner on an interim basis for a self-service app and a web-based application that had already been launched on the market. Via the digital travel assistant, holidaymakers can access all travel documents and information about their booked vacation and use a round-the-clock service during their trip. The project brief included conceptual support for the realignment of the app strategy and the customer login strategy in the German-speaking source market.
After a short training period, our experienced senior consultant was able to quickly take on the role of business owner. The initial focus was on staffing the implementation team from Germany and UK. This involved recruiting and training software developers from two countries for the technical team and requirements experts for the business department.
The existing catalog of requirements for the applications was then updated to reflect the current strategic orientation and coordinated with the stakeholders. Customer experience and feedback as well as internal tour operator planning were successfully translated into agile requirements elements (epics and user stories) in workshops and face-to-face and virtual expert meetings.
The detailed definition of the requirements for expanding the platform was handled by the business owner and the team.
To define the future strategy, the requirements and the renaming of the product, the business owner used his extensive market experience and, together with the team, drew on innovations and digital trends.
The focus was on comprehensive service automation in order to optimize the 360-degree service for travellers and offer a unified commerce approach between the booking office, tour operator, operations, hotel, airlines and other service providers.
Marketing automation measures and user-oriented optimizations were aimed at increasing customer loyalty.
In regular planning sessions via teams from different source markets, the joint orientation was strategically coordinated. The neusta expert was responsible for various requirements including the planning of the project and requirements as well as the interaction in the respective agile teams as product owner on the business side.
The team's other tasks included controlling, monitoring and reporting KPIs to the stakeholders and the mobile teams in the source markets. Finally, incident management and bug reporting were set up between the countries.
A major milestone shortly before the end of the project was the renaming of the app and website as part of the international alignment of the source markets.
After taking on the role of business owner, the entire specialist team, the technical team and the mobile team were able to successfully implement the prioritized requirements. The future strategy towards a customer-oriented 360-degree focus and centered customer loyalty was successfully initiated and the future path was paved. A new uniform customer identification system in a modern unified commerce environment, consisting of an app, website and travel agencies, is also being implemented.
The trend in KPIs was very exciting: Usage rates increased by a high factor even during the Covid-19 pandemic due to improved benefit argumentation and customer communication. Travelers used the new applications much more frequently after booking and during the trip. Increased revenue from additional services, customer loyalty successes through marketing measures and greater service automation with flight time changes, real-time information, chats between guests and staff and live tracking on arrival and departure boosted efficiency and increased customer satisfaction.
After a successful interim management period, our business owner was able to complete his tasks and the strategic direction and hand them over to his successor, who is now a permanent employee of the company.
