Case Study - Inventory and Reservation System

The Client

Our client, a leading luxury automobile rental company with over ten branches in the Bay Area and Los Angeles, California, offers a wide variety of sports cars, convertibles, luxury sedans and SUVs. They have provided a winning combination of outstanding automobiles and personal service for over a decade.

The Challenge

Our client needed to provide an efficient way for their internal Customer Service Representatives (CSRs) to make automobile reservations, keep track of automobile inventory and availability at multiple locations, and manage complex rental rate algorithms, while serving customer calls over the toll-free reservation line.

Providing a simple way for their customers to serve themselves by making automobile reservations online through a secured web site was another longer term goal. Allowing their customers to select a luxury automobile, make a reservation, and receive an instant reservation response were key parts of this goal.

The Solution

In a phased approach Digiguys developed a set of secure, easy-to-use, database-driven modules including:

The internal CSR Reservation Manager and automobile Inventory System support the Customer Service Representatives with their daily reservation and automobile inventory tasks. The Rental Rate System provides accurate rental rates that include holiday, seasonal, and day of week variations. The systems are web-based, so the CSRs from every branch have access to the same information.

The e-commerce web site allows clients to follow a simple 3-step process to rent a car from the comfort of their own computer without calling the client's toll-free number. The e-commerce web site is driven by the data from the internal systems, so it provides the same accurate and timely information.

The Reservation Manager is a workflow system that allows CSRs to process reservations that have been made online. It includes sophisticated e-mail response features to simplify the CSRs' work.

Finding a host, bringing traffic to the e-commerce web site, and tracking the web site usage were also key parts of the project. Digiguys researched hosting options and selected the appropriate hosting partner to provide the hardware infrastructure, support, and traffic building and tracking tools.

As security and performance were main concerns, Digiguys architected the system so that the e-commerce, Extranet, and Intranet systems are all independent from each other.

The Benefits Delivered

These integrated systems unify the reservation process across the client’s branches, giving them better control over their luxury automobile inventory and rates and allowing them to work more efficiently. As a result, our client provides higher quality service to their luxury automobile clients by delivering more accurate and timely information. Also, the cost-effective and secure online reservations system provides customers with a self-service rental option via the web.

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