Travel

1. Case study
TravelCounsellorsstreamlines
customercommunications
HP Exstream delivers a better customer
experience while reducing workload and cost
Industry
Travel and tourism
Objective
Establish the company’s image for highly
personalised, professional services and reflect
this in redesigned customer communications
Approach
Researched the market for customer
communication management solutions
and saw demonstrations from a shortlist
of leading vendors
IT matters
• Automates labour-intensive design processes
and reduces template numbers to increase
staff productivity
• Enables designs to be stored and reused to
further reduce document development times
• Supports a wide variety of file formats and output
systems, including a dozen electronic formats
Business matters
• Makes documents more attractive, readable and
informative to improve customer experience
• Co-ordinates design to underline Travel
Counsellors’ corporate image
• Reduces time to market for document changes
and eliminates the cost of external developers
“We felt that HP Exstream would do everything that we
needed. It would also do a lot of things that we hadn’t
realised that we needed.”
– Paul Speakman, IT director, Travel Counsellors
Makingthevisionareality
Fast growing UK and international travel company
Travel Counsellors takes pride in the highly personalised
service offered by its home-based franchisees. When it
decided to underline this image with a rebrand it also
needed to improve its documentation. The HP Exstream
customer communication management platform was
chosen to transform this vision into a workable reality.

2. Case study | Travel Counsellors
Challenge
Rebranding exercise
Award-winning company Travel Counsellors
was founded in 1994 and provides holiday
and corporate travel packages for 450,000
customers. Its 1,300 self-employed
Travel Counsellors are experienced
travel-trade professionals who work
from home on a franchise basis.
Headquartered in Bolton, this is a fast growing
company with a business model that has
been replicated in Ireland, The Netherlands,
Australia, South Africa, Canada and Dubai.
A major success factor is the high level of
back-office support that homeworkers
receive from a network of experienced staff
including administration, IT, marketing and
commercial. Centralised systems and support
leave them free to build close relationships
with their customers and the result is a
concierge-style, highly personalised service.
“We take pride in good customer service.
Our business model is based on building
relationships and creating value through the
bespoke 24/7 service our agents provide,
as opposed to the internet’s transactional
price drive model,” says Paul Speakman,
IT director with Travel Counsellors.
Customer communications play a crucial
role in the operation. When agents receive
an inquiry, they have access to a host of
suppliers’ products and can use the company’s
in-house dynamic packaging system Phenix.
Thissystemallowstheagenttotailor-make
itinerariesfromawiderangeofdirectly
contractedproducts,givingthemcontroloftheir
earningswhilstgettingthemostcompetitive
dealforthecustomer.Phenixmanagesall
accountingandgeneratesthenecessary
customercommunicationssuchasquotations,
bookingconfirmations,itineraries,vouchers,
receipts,invoicesandpaymentreminders.
These communications are the company’s main
conduit to its customers and Travel Counsellors
felt that they could be improved even further.
“As we continue to expand and grow our
customer base we wanted to develop our
communications to reflect our brand values,”
explains Speakman. “The design of our
customer communications was inconsistent
in places. Some information was repeated
and they were produced using Microsoft®
Reporting Services which was not very
flexible. It didn’t allow us to make the kind
of professional communications we wanted
and it was hard to manage, requiring a
developer whenever changes were needed.”
Travel Counsellors embarked on a rebranding
exercise. It employed an external consultant
to redesign the communications with a
common look and feel and used its own
PR department to re-jig the words, making
them easier to read and understand.
The vision was set, but the company
needed a way to make it work in reality.
2

3. Case study | Travel Counsellors
Solution
New document designs
Travel Counsellors’ analyst project
manager, Victoria Ogden, researched
customer communications management
solutions on the Internet and compiled
a shortlist of possible solutions that
were called in for demonstration.
One of these was the multi-channel
Customer Communication Management
(CCM) solution, HP Exstream.
“HP Exstream ticked all our boxes,”
says Speakman. “It was regarded as
the best on the market and featured
high in analyst rankings.”
HP Exstream offers a single platform
that seamlessly supports on-demand
and interactive document applications
of all types. Designed to fit into any
IT environment, it can directly access
structured and unstructured systems from
almost any data source. Highly individual
communications can then be output through
many channels including print and email,
SMS, social media, Internet, email and fax.
Travel Counsellors’ own lead developer
managed a straightforward implementation
of HP Exstream, supported by some
conference calls with HP specialists, and the
installation was followed by a three day
training workshop. HP Exstream is set up
to draw information from the database
behind the Phenix system to incorporate
it into the new communication designs.
Benefits
Professional veneer
HP Exstream has given Travel Counsellors a
firm foundation for ongoing improvement of
its customer communication management.
A small team has started using the solution
purely in the UK with output limited to
colour and mono versions in PDF format
for print or email. Typical monthly figures
show that HP Exstream generates 32,000
documents a month with over 700 variables
and these figures are purely for its UK holiday
business, excluding business travel.
“At the moment we are basing the documents
on the information we have from the bookings,
with limited personalisation but we are looking
to increase the level of personalisation in later
phases,” adds Speakman. “The new system
also allows our Travel Counsellors to theme
their documents with suitable images for such
things as beach holidays, ski trips or cruises.
“The documents have become a lot more
professional and we have had good feedback
from both our agents and customers.
Using HP Exstream has allowed us to be more
flexible and create designs that would not
have been possible with the old system.
We are also able to fix issues much more
quickly. With the old system we needed
the developer to make any changes but
that is no longer the case so we can turn
changes around much more quickly,
which is going to improve the quality
of the documents we send out.”
3
32,000
documents a month
and more to come

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Case study | Travel Counsellors
Customer solution
at a glance
Software
• HP Exstream
© Copyright 2014 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. The only
warranties for HP products and services are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services. Nothing herein
should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. HP shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein.
Microsoft is a U.S. registered trademark of the Microsoft group of companies.
4AA5-0440EEW, March 2014
Travel Counsellors’ IT team has been
pleased with the service provided by
the HP Exstream team who, they say
are always ‘on the ball’ with feedback,
problem solving or issuing new versions.
Reduced complexity
Using HP Exstream has enabled Travel
Counsellors to reduce the complexity of
communication production by consolidating
the number of templates it uses and
condensing two or three communications
into one. The 37 templates that were used
in the UK have been reduced to 25 and
it is hoped that these reductions will be
replicated in the other six territories.
“Now our communications are
designed to look like a family
of documents, reflecting our
relational and highly personal
business model.”
– Victoria Ogden, analyst project manager,
Travel Counsellors
“Making changes to documents is a lot quicker
than it was previously,” explains Victoria
Ogden. “We will be able to have several
countries on the same templates and that will
save a lot of time. They are also modular so if,
for example, we decide to change our logo we
just do it in one place rather than 50 places.”
As well as extending the use of HP Exstream
to its operations in other countries,
Travel Counsellors also plans to take
advantage of different digital delivery
methods for electronic communications.
“Traditionally we have run a print and post
exercise but with HP Exstream, we’re moving
away from that to become more digital,”
says Speakman. “Customers expect that
now and by increasingly using electronic
channels means, we will be able to deliver
their documents sooner. Our customer
communications now look more professional
and are clearer to understand. It’s all
about building the brand and improving
the customer experience.”
Learn more at
hp.com/exstream