Customer Success: How one of the World’s Leading Travel Retail Platforms used Orbit for Reporting & Analytics 

There are several reasons why this UK-based travel retail company picked Orbit for its reporting, analytics, and Business Intelligence (BI) requirements. 

• One, the company was looking to migrate from Oracle Discoverer and they were looking for a next-generation reporting solution that had the ability to automatically convert existing Discoverer reports 
• Two, it was using Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) and it needed a solution that would seamlessly integrate with this ERP platform
• Last but not least, the company adopted a data-first strategy with its own “Insights” tool that plays a key role in helping its customers with revenue growth and trend spotting. Therefore, the company needed a proven analytics solution that can take in data from a wide range of data sources, unify this data to a centralized warehouse, and generate insights using cutting-edge data models. 

Customer Profile 

The company is a leading player offering distribution, technology, and payment solutions to the travel and tourism industry. It operates in the global distribution system (GDS) sector – serving travel agencies around the world with easy booking solutions. 

Its customers include Online Travel Agencies (OTAs), retail travel agencies, and niche players who serve the business travel segment. The company employs over 3,700 people and is headquartered in Langley, Berkshire, UK. 

Background and Context 

The company is differentiating itself from the rest of the competition with its modern marketplace for travel retailing. This marketplace was built to bring simplicity to the process of bringing together travel suppliers, travel agencies, and travelers. It uses AI and data analytics to improve various aspects of distribution, keeping in mind the business needs of the agencies. 

In order to do this well, the company needed a reporting and analytics platform that would seamlessly integrate with Oracle EBS, and other data sources. There was also a crying need to reduce the reliance on the IT team and move to a self-service reporting and analytics solution. 

Most importantly, they wanted to migrate away from Oracle Discoverer into a modern reporting and analytics solution. If the new solution had the ability to automatically convert existing Discoverer reports that would truly add value and save valuable time. 

The company decided to implement Orbit for operational reporting, data management, BI, and financial reporting as well. 

In the future, there is also scope to use Orbit’s embedded analytics solution as the company is gearing up to launch a data solution for travel agencies and travel suppliers to gather better insights. 

The Solution

The initial scope of the project included the following:

1. Migrate from Oracle Discoverer to Orbit and use Orbit’s Discoverer Migration Utility to automatically convert existing reports using automation. This was a critical requirement for the company. 
2. Implement our operational reporting and BI solution to enable business users to get a unified view and garner insights from data residing in Oracle EBS and other data sources. Our solution was used complementary to other solutions like Tableau/PowerBI.  
3. To enable self-service analytics for the business user from real-time data, keeping in mind that the insights gathered would really help the company’s customers grow revenues, while also helping the company grow its own business. 

The following Orbit solutions were implemented:

1. Orbit Reporting Solutions
   1. Data Visualization (Charts and Dashboards)
   2. Excel Reporting
   3. Financial Reporting 
2. Orbit BI 
   1. Pricing Insights from various supplier 
   2. Insights on traveler behavior and expectations 
3. Migration of reports from Discoverer to Orbit 
4. Wide Range of pre-built reports 

Some of the key capabilities of Orbit’s operational reporting and analytics solution include: 

1. Empowering the business user with self-service to generate real-time transactional reports
2. Enabling tracking of price changes and traveler sentiments in real-time, with mobile-ready dashboards
3. Pulling all relevant data scattered across different systems, in different formats, from both on-premise and cloud-based applications to provide a unified view
4. Allows drilling down from the summary to the lowest level of detail in any report
5. Plugins like Excel Edge for Excel Reporting, GLSense for Financial Reporting, and DataJump for data extracts 
6. Visualization tools for building reports and dashboards quickly and as per user needs
7. Scheduling predefined frequencies such as daily, weekly, or monthly for running reports
8. Collaborating with other team members by sharing reports for faster decisions

Impact & Benefits 

The company needed a solution that could talk to different data sources and integrate relevant data to provide a unified view. Orbit Analytics is a platform-agnostic tool that can read and pull out data from on-premise and cloud systems. It could work on top of Oracle EBS and other data sources as well. 

Additionally, the company was looking for an analytics solution that would provide real-time insights on how prices are changing, demand is shifting, and other traveler insights. Orbit’s advanced data management capabilities were critical to power this. 

One of the biggest benefits was valuable time saved with our Discoverer Migration Utility to automatically migrate current reports to Orbit.