The thoughts of a CPTO focused on strategy, technology and sustainability.
Travel agents often book outside of the corporate booking engine. A good example of this is Ryanair or easyJet flights, and other tour operators or dmcs, who may give negotiated rates over the phone.
These manually booked elements, bear risks. Risk of typos, date errors, risk of incorrect costs. If left un-checked these bear a liability to travel agencies.
Continue reading “Travel agencies use Robotic Process Automation (RPA) to save money”Traditional applications can be monolithic beasts with APIs as the final layer These services present a prescribed flow are often inflexible and were built to do a specific purpose.
Traditional applications are usually object oriented with a series of services being called internally, and eventually rendered as a soap/rest API. Quite often with all functions being within a single code repo.
Continue reading “Deliver innovation via micro services orchestration.”
When reviewing systems, I use this model to provide useful context to ensure that applications/services have sufficient processing to ensure data security is managed and maintained.
Confidentiality – what level of secrecy is expected for this product or service, how do we protect it, how do we allow access to the data
Integrity – how do we protect the data, how do we prevent unwanted modifications, how do we maintain consistency, how do we know what changed and who changed it.
Availability – ensure uninterrupted access to the data
OpenVPN has been my goto appliance for SSL VPN connections for Devops accessing cloud services, especially as AWS doesn’t have its own SSL VPN gateway!
Open VPN provides a good UI and client tools. Until recently I’ve been happy to pay for its annual licence fee as it offered good value, but earlier this year they changed their model and increased their prices by 400% (oh wait thats before discount, its ONLY increased by 229%).
Last year an annual 10 user licence cost $180
Continue reading “When SaaS providers hike their prices.”Zebra printers are one of the most popular label printers, also the printer recommended by Royal Mail Click and Drop (which links to Shopify). For new sign ups Royal mail offer a £150 Zebra GK420D printer which is a great deal but it isn’t a wifi printer (it is usb, serial or parallel). Network versions are available but are about £200 more.
Using a zebra printer wired is fine, but its a bit messy being tied to a cable in 2021! It would be much more convenient if it was wireless.
Continue reading “How to wifi enable a Zebra USB label printer.”In our current covid landscape, overseas holidays in 2021 feel quite far away.
The question is, is a UK holiday significantly different in cost to an overseas holiday.
In review; It’s about the same if you book early. For my example I took prices today (1st Feb) for bookings on the 1st August for 7 nights. 4 pax (2 Adults, 2 Children) – i’m using airbnb to give average costs per night as a base line.
Lets compare popular UK with popular Spanish destinations.
Continue reading “UK or overseas holidays in 2021?”At the minute travel companies are releasing sales promoting a low deposit, fully flexible booking to secure their 2021 holiday.
With the current terms, your deposit is refundable (cash/voucher), previously this would have been non-refundable. As a result many consumers are willing to potentially book multiple bookings (to different destinations) on the hopes that they can get a great deal for multiple possible destinations by booking early, and then cancelling nearer the time of departure
Continue reading “Could revenue and accounting departments be in for a challenge for 2021 bookings?”I, like many people rebooked my August 2020 booking to 2021 assuming that the world would be back to normal by then. At the time I thought a year for the virus to be under control was realistic. I didn’t expect the subsequent waves of COVID-19 which followed.
Before we start, let me say; I believe the lockdowns are necessary, the heath of the world is the most important thing, however our economies are paying the price whilst this happens, and this can only happen for so long before we enter a recession on a global scale. We have to re-ignite economies and tourism is a contributor, so I’m keen for tourism to resume when it can, but only when it’s safe to do so.
The challenges we face now is whether travel will re-open in 2021 or whether we have to wait until 2022, when hopefully free, un-restricted travel will be once again possible.
I like a mix of holidays, my family break plus some mini-breaks. 36h somewhere new can be exciting exploring new places you’ve never been to. In 2020 I booked a variety of short breaks optimistically ior 2021, so far these have all been cancelled. My challenges have been with flights changes and cancelations, the destination no longer accepting UK entries, various covid entry and exit requirements and the UK law on non-essential travel. I was perhaps too optimistic !
If countries require a 14-day quarantine, then travel just isn’t going to be possible. Even a 5 day quarantine will limit most of us. I guess they’ll always be some hotels who’ll attract customers who are happy to quarantine with other guests and be confined somewhere warm, but that wont be me.
For me, the £150 pp covid test on departure, then finding another to return and quarantine has completely cancelled any short break. Longer breaks this is now part of the requirements for the time being.
Hopefully the world wide vaccines will reduce infections and deaths and get things under control. Whether thats possible by July and for all the world to agree to relax their entry requirements is a bit IF. I hope the world leaders will find a way for tourism to resume this year.
If countries don’t open their borders, and do not lift arrival quarantine restrictions then holidays will be unlikely to go ahead. I don’t have any intention to fly across the world to stay in a hotel for 2 weeks in order to then fly home, I might as well stay at home.
I hope by June/July things will be more in control, and I hope tourism will find a way back.
During COVID-19, I received a few linked-in requests for interviews about the day to day challenges of a CTO. I have to admit, I didn’t participate but it did trigger me to write this post.
As a Chief Technology Officer (CTO) I am responsible for the operation of technology and its associated systems. So I am responsible for technical infrastructure, monitoring, deployment, development and all 3rd party systems and integrations. The CTO also delivers against a strategy drafted from a joint vision of the business vision shared by the board.
Continue reading “A day in the life”COVID-19 impacted the world economy like no other event. It came very quickly and many companies were not prepared for their staff to be suddenly working remotely.
The majority of office workers have in the most part been working from home since March, those which are less fortunate have been furloughed.
For some businesses have had a down turn in sales but needed to maintain customer services (such as most travel businesses) and those businesses have managed reasonably well to manage the increase in demand. Those companies I applaud, their income has dropped but they managed to maintain a good level of customer services.
The problem is with companies who’s income remains high who are making it difficult for consumers to get the service they need. These companies have reported stable profits and been mostly unaffected by COVID-19.
A couple of examples that I’ve personally encountered.
During this period I’ve needed to make various calls. Virgin Mobile for example have ceased their chat, and their phones queue indefinitely (I gave up after more than 10 attempts). Other companies such as e-commerce giants have removed their phone numbers entirely, and I think this isn’t acceptable.
Sainsbury’s on numerous occasions have incorrectly delivered products, and fail to refund or resolve. You’re asked to email, but emails go unanswered. So it’s down to the customer to contact Sainsbury’s to resolve. The phone experience is challenging, you might get answered eventually but the person who answers isn’t trained or able to service, so disconnects you, if you’re lucky you might get answered to be passed to someone else and on goes the pain.
Setting up a remote workspace and a sip phone client on a cloud based phone system isn’t complex, enabling access to systems remotely isn’t that difficult. We can adapt to a remote workforce. To withdraw phone numbers and to be unable to answer calls at all is an example of some businesses intentionally furloughing staff to receive subsides and not enabling its staff to operate as it should do.
Maybe we were unfortunate with when we contacted these businesses. I understand businesses need to make a profit to survive, if buy some luck you have more sales then you can afford to increase your customer services teams, but clearly for these businesses that’s not something they’ve done.
I switched from Virgin Mobile, and stopped buying from Sainsbury’s online.