Bryan-College Station Convention and Visitors Bureau

Visitors Bureau Improves Efficiency and Document Quality to Attract Travelers

The Bryan-College Station Convention and Visitors Bureau (BCSCVB) promotes the region as an attractive destination for business and leisure travelers. BCSCVB needs to operate efficiently while presenting a highly professional image in all its communications and activities. The Windows Vista™ operating system and Microsoft® Office Professional 2007 are helping employees get more done, produce high-impact customer communications, and keep systems safe.

 

Business Needs

The Bryan-College Station Convention and Visitors Bureau (BCSCVB) is responsible for increasing convention and leisure tourism in Bryan-College Station, Texas. To promote the area, BCSCVB designs a myriad of documents, including visitor’s guides, destination planners, and customized presentations for groups such as sports teams and professional associations.

Windows Vista and Office Professional 2007 offer plenty of opportunities for smaller organizations like ours to improve our communications, enhance productivity, and increase security. Heather Reece Manager of Communications and Public Relations, Bryan-College Station Convention and Visitors Bureau

Although the BCSCVB has a staff of only nine full-time and four part-time employees, it harnesses technology to help it operate as swiftly and professionally as a much larger organization. BCSCVB employees use 12 computers to create documentation, run day-to-day operations, and communicate with potential visitors, hotels, entertainment venues, restaurants, and other local attractions. “We want to be as polished as possible in our communications so that prospective visitors have confidence that we’re taking good care of them and our local businesses know that they’re being well represented,” says Heather Reece, Manager of Communications and Public Relations for the BCSCVB.

The organization aims to provide first-class customer service by responding quickly to requests for last-minute accommodations and disseminating the most up-to-date venue descriptions. “The faster we can find and provide timely details to help people, the more informed decisions they can make about our area,” says Reece. “We strive to be the best source for information about all regional events, so making sure that we have the tools to quickly share that information is critical.”

Solution

To further its goals, the Bryan-College Station Convention and Visitors Bureau recently deployed the Windows Vista™ Business operating system and Microsoft® Office Professional 2007 productivity suite. The organization worked with MicroAge College Station, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and Small Business Specialist  that provides BCSCVB with outsourced IT services.

“We felt that BCSCVB would really benefit from the new IT environment,” says Wendy Weldon, Marketing Director for MicroAge College Station. “Their PCs were running on a variety of operating systems, some of which were several generations removed from Windows Vista. Additionally, BCSCVB staff members don’t just use the basic features of their applications—they really dive deep into the technology to get the most out of it.”
 
BCSCVB staff members now look to a variety of Office Professional 2007 programs to conduct their daily business. They produce brochures and guides with Office Publisher 2007, develop targeted presentations for groups of visitors using Office PowerPoint® 2007 presentation graphics program, and handle correspondence and contact management with Microsoft Office Outlook® messaging and collaboration client.
BCSCVB also relies on Office Access™ 2007 database software for maintaining a database of hotels, restaurants, and other area venues, and it uses Office Excel® 2007 for tracking sporting event revenues.

Benefits

With its new operating system and productivity tools, the BCSCVB is able to save time, stay focused on its business, and better serve its customers. Says Reece, “The combination of Windows Vista and Office Professional 2007 is helping us find better ways of promoting tourism in the Bryan-College Station area, and it lets us produce higher-quality marketing materials to accomplish our goals.” Benefits include:

• Increased efficiency. The new user interfaces, Integrated Search functionality, and features such as Live Icons and live taskbar thumbnails in Windows Vista help BCSCVB staff improve their productivity by making documents, messages, and programs easier to find and use. “Navigating is so intuitive that I’m able to accomplish a lot more in less time,” says Kindra Fry, Sports Director for the BCSCVB. “If I need everything related to a specific tournament, I no longer have to dig around—the search tool delivers all relevant information with just a click. It probably saves me five to ten minutes per search, which really adds up over the course of the day.”
  
  BCSCVB also takes advantage of Windows Vista gadgets to streamline certain tasks. “I use the sticky-note gadget to collect event-related information in a single, easy-to-find location as I browse the Web,” says Reece. “When I’m through, I add that information to our own Web site, deleting each sticky note as I’m finished with it.”
  
  
• High-quality communications. The BCSCVB is taking advantage of multiple easy-to-use tools to better reach its intended audiences. “The Office Ribbon toolbar makes the right tools available when I need them,” says Reece. “We design a variety of brochures in Office Publisher 2007; it’s made it really easy for us to do professional-quality design and publishing without using an outside vendor.”  BCSCVB also ensures that it has a single source for up-to-date contact information by using an Access 2007 database for tracking, which means that the right information goes to the right people.
  
  
• Enhanced network security. New security features in both Windows Vista and the 2007 release of the Microsoft Office system are helping the BCSCVB shield its network. “Recently I received an e-mail message that looked like it was from a well-known retailer, but when I clicked on it, Outlook 2007 immediately notified me that it was a phishing e-mail—I thought that was brilliant,” says Reece.
  
  Windows Vista gadgets are helping overall network security by reducing internet downloads. “We used to spend a huge amount of time cleaning off spyware that came along with programs like desktop clocks or weather alerts that users had downloaded. With those gadgets already available in Windows Vista, spyware exposure is reduced,” says Weldon.
  
  
• Opportunities to expand. The BCSCVB is planning to extend its use of Windows Vista and Office Professional 2007. “The new functionality available to us will help streamline operations,” says Tiffany Cantrell, Office Manager for the BCSCVB. “For example, we’re planning to start e-mail marketing, rather than printing and faxing newsletters.”