Springbok Atlas
Industry: Travel and Tourism
Description: System integration, website development
Insight
Springbok Atlas uses a system called Tourplan to manage their products and offerings, and utilises a website which presents their information to their agents via the internet. The aim was to allow the agents to book the products and services themselves, however, the interface was not user friendly and the website was prone to malfunction.
In addition, the Springbok Atlas public website retrieved its product and service information from the agent website via an XML feed, instead of being fetched directly from the Tourplan API, which was labour intensive and prone to data errors.
Process
White Wall Web created a new integration layer to Tourplan and re-developed a website front-end that services both public users and agents.
As well as querying the Tourplan API to ensure that all data is up to date on the front-end, this information is also cached, so should the API be unavailable, users will still have access to browse the front-end website.
Value
Though the visible changes have been minor, the website is now permanently up to date and mirrors the information captured in Tourplan. It is also a single interface available to agents and direct clients, therefore minimising duplication of work. By directly integrating with Tourplan, the need to maintain multiple systems is no longer necessary as the website’s information is automatically requested directly from the initial point of capture in Tourplan.
This has greatly streamlined Springbok Atlas’s process and created a more reliable and efficient website experience for users.
Technology
The solution (new front-end and API query caching) has been built using Ruby on Rails, and a MySQL database for storage using Tourplan’s host Connect XML interface to connect to Tourplan.
See it
