Custom Website Solutions
Case Study : Charter Bus Reservation Website
, the premier charter bus company in America is family owned and has been in the charter bus rental and service business since 1928. They charter buses for all kinds of groups including VIPs, businesses, travel agencies, sports teams, and more. They soon realized that there was no way to interactively book a charter bus tour on the world wide web. Although there were several sites that provided small pieces of the puzzle, there was no one comprehensive website that provided the necessary scheduling, vendor management, and payment processing components necessary to complete the booking of a trip. Armed with this information, they set out to to launch a web site capable of providing a complete charter bus tour processing environment. Dassnagar Infosystems, was selected to assist in the completion of the design and to build the new site .
Objectives
- Develop a user friendly web site for booking charter bus tours.
- Provide a vendor interface to allow tour bus companies to setup vehicle inventories, prices, and schedules
- Utilize dynamic routing services to accurately price trips based upon itinerary and equipment requirements.
- Deploy automatic email notification system to notify management, customers, and vendors of trip status and actions required.
- Build a payment processing interface to collect funds due and automatically disburse payments to vendors.
The Solution
The initial phase of the project involved a detailed analysis of the system requirements and an evaluation of various business process at the end of which System Requirements Specification (SRS) was generated and given to client for his approval. As vehicle routing was an integral part of the system, preliminary emphasis was placed upon locating available routing software and selecting a package that could work in conjunction with the other required web enabled components.
The next step involved detailed process review and Graphical User Interface (GUI) design. Dassnagar's web designers worked closely with client co-ordinator to establish efficient process flow diagrams while minimizing the amount of user intervention required and save number of clicks. Niche features such as saving incomplete itineraries and adding airports and point of interest lookups were also added to assist the site user. Using secure access, customised vendor forms allowed maintenance of fleets, availability and pricing.
The web application development was based on Microsoft technologies using MS SQL Server 2000 and Active Server pages as the server side technology. To gain processing efficiency, stored procedures, and triggers replaced SQL queries. Automated processes such as email notification and electronic payments were developed using server based processing. A service monitor was also added to notify support staff in the event of failures on transaction processing.
The final step involved building a content management system allowing client's support staff to update the database and an Administration Console was provided to have the back end navigation streamlined for the site, a reporting module to summarize activity and transactions, and an accounting interface for exporting pertinent data to client's back office accounting system.
During the entire design and development process, Dassnagar's Project Manager worked closely with the client co-ordinator using MSN Chat, Skype, Email and maintained a test web server allowing client personnel to review and test phase by phase. In fact, Dassnagar was able to complete this comprehensive project entirely from India (Kolkata) while never actually meeting the customer situated in the United States.
