Asiatravelmart picks Microsoft Great Plains for a smooth financial ride

Asiatravelmart.com is Asia's number one online travel marketplace. Its unparalleled Internetbased booking engine serves as a fundamental platform for travel buyers and sellers worldwide to interact. The main Internet applications are purpose-built and unique, but they wanted an industry-standard, reliable and easily integrated financial system from a strong and established company. They selected Microsoft Business Solutions—Great Plains for its ease of integration with their applications, its reliability and comprehensive reporting tools.

Now that the dust has settled after the “boom-and-bust” years of the dot-coms, Internetdriven commerce is taking off in a big way. Recent surveys have shown that consumers now have more confidence in Internet transactions and many businesses are also reaping the benefits that it can bring. Of course, some products are better suited to e-commerce than others and one of the early successes has been in the travel industry. Lowest-fare searches have been especially popular, with many web sites set up just for this purpose. In Asia, one of the first travel sites was asiatravelmart.com (part of ATM Holdings Inc.) headquartered near Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. It is now Asia's number one online travel marketplace. Alex Kong, CEO, Asiatravelmart, founded the company in June 1997 when he saw the popularity of travel based sites outside Asia, but no strong players locally. Alex’s vision for the company was much larger than a straightforward B2C service. It was to be able to provide infrastructure and complete technology solutions to the travel industry. In fact, although asiatravelmart.com is their showcase company on the web, it is really just the tip of the iceberg as B2B solutions form the majority of their business today.

Unique infrastructure requires a reliable financial backbone
Another part of the ATM group is AFOOFA Solutions, who provides the infrastructure which supports direct, real-time connections to the Global Distribution Systems (GDS) for airline booking, as well as a host of Computer Reservation Systems (CRS), and discounted flight and hotel databases of consolidators. In total, it has access to over 700 airlines, 54,000 hotels and 45 car rental companies, including ferries, wholesalers, and travel agents in 200 countries. In front of this is their own web based portal, which is so customisable that it appears part of the client’s own site!

Indeed many traditional travel-agents use it to drive their own web-sites. Alex said “it is very simple to do. In less than 15 minutes, we can make them a “clicks-and-mortar” business!” On a larger scale, they recently signed an agreement to power over 200,000 travel agent sites world-wide with JTB, the largest travel group in the world.

The cutting-edge Asiatravelmart.com booking engine is the first in the world that accepts payment in multiple currencies and processes real-time credit card transactions which enables them to provide full B2B solutions to a wide range of travel-related companies.


The signing ceremony for Asiatravelmart and Great Plains
(From left) Alex Kong (CEO, Asiatravelmart),
Paul Dyhr (representing Microsoft Business Solutions),
Dr. Joan Lee (Managing Director, Eclipse)

While ATM was entirely responsible for creating the portal and system infrastructure, they had earlier decided to use an off-the-shelf financial package as the back-end. Their original accounting system was relatively simple, but as the complexity and size of their business expanded, they knew a replacement was needed.

Alex said that with today’s demanding business operations conditions, he required a solution that not only met his specific requirements but one that could also be completely relied on. In particular, it must be able to interface with their many existing applications and import and export data in real-time.

The evaluation process went into high-gear during 2001. They looked at a number of solutions ranging in cost from thousands to hundred-of-thousands, trying to find the right mix of features and price.

It is a complex business, as many of their customers require their own financial reports and a lot of customisation is needed to link in with their portal. However, in November 2001, the decision was made: Microsoft Business Solutions—Great Plains!

“We have a lot of confidence in Microsoft products and we felt Microsoft Great Plains would meet our needs. Eclipse Computing, a Microsoft Certified Business Solutions Partner were able to understand our business and as we gave them scenarios, they were able to show us how Microsoft Great Plains would handle it. Because of this we were convinced it was the right solution.”

Customisation was started by Eclipse in February and parallel runs started in May. Due to the complexity of the system, these were continued for three months as the different functions were phased in. By August 2002, everything was deemed fully functional and the system was switched over.

Impressive Results!

A Better Way to Do Business
Alex highlighted the key role of the financial solution. “Since the beginning of this year, we have been strengthening our hold in the B2B solutions market. Microsoft Great Plains has been the major contributor in intensifying the efficiency of the company’s back-office operations, which is pivotal in increasing business to keep the bottom-line healthy. The strategy is paying off, with business volumes escalating tremendously and the revenue increasing 10 times. We expect to double our turnover to some RM50 million this year.” A good example is the refunds and credit process, which although appearing on-line to the user, was completely manual on the back-end due to the incapability of the previous system. It is now fully automated by Microsoft Great Plains.

Wong Swee Shenn, Microsoft Business Solutions, Channel Sales Manager, Malaysia said, “Communications between companies, their customers and employees are crucial to business productivity - and ATM's adoption of Microsoft Great Plains has greatly enhanced their e-Business operations by providing that interconnectivity.

One of the things that really impress Alex’s customers is how Microsoft Great Plains provides a “dashboard” to their business. “Customer management can see exactly what transactions are currently in process, how much has been done that day, that month, that year and so on, all in real-time.”

Commending Asiatravelmart’s decision to upgrade to a more comprehensive business solution, Dr. Joan Lee, Managing Director of Eclipse Computing Sdn. Bhd. said “In addition to having faster turnaround time for financial reporting, Microsoft Great Plains will provide Asiatravelmart with a centralized system to support multiple sites hence enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of their finance operations.”

Customer Profile
Asiatravelmart.com is Asia's number one online travel marketplace. Its unparalleled Internet-based booking engine serves as a fundamental platform for travel buyers and sellers worldwide to interact.

Business Situation
Find a full financial system that could be integrated at many different levels with their on-line travel applications.

Solution
Microsoft® Business Solutions—Great Plains®

• General Ledger with FRx
• Bank Reconciliation
• Multi-Currency Management
• Payables Management
• Receivables Management
• Integration Manager
• Modifier VBA

Benefits

• Comprehensive reporting
• Fully integrated
• Substantially reduced paperwork
• High reliability

Software and Services:

• Microsoft Windows Server 2000
• Microsoft SQL Server

“Microsoft Business Solutions— Great Plains provides us with a fully automated platform that accommodates the integration needs of the front end operations of our finance department.”


Mr. Alex Kong,
CEO, Asia Travel Mart


“Microsoft Great Plains has been the major contributor in intensifying the efficiency of the company’s back-office operations, which is pivotal in increasing business to keep the bottom-line healthy!”


Mr. Alex Kong,
CEO, Asia Travel Mart