Integration of reserve platforms and GDS
The most important national airline of that moment decides to change the Core platform for its GDS (Global Distribution System) reservation system from Condor to Amadeus. This process involves the migration of internal systems to establish connection with the new reservation platform. Imectech was selected to support the migration of applications to the new system by our knowledge of the business, both the previous platform and the new (Condor-Amadeus).
The Call Center portal was developed internally by the airline and allows you to view and select a reservation to be processed. Part of the reservations have been previously created in the GDS and sent to a queue. This system consults the reservations that are in queues, allows access to the reservation in the GDS, consult it, validate it (according to the process established by both the GDS and the business) and complete it with the information necessary for its processing. The objective is that the ticket can be issued for the selected reservation and notify the client (reservation owner).
Impact
Our challenge was to retake the code, identify the points of interaction with the GDS and implement them in the new platform in a short time. This application was the basis of operation of the Call Center and should be ready and operating correctly at the time of launch of the new platform to not deteriorate the quality of customer service.
In order to migrate this application we received the source code and in a very short time we had to leave it working under the new platform of Reservations of Amadeus.
The first step was to know very well the application on the outside (its operation) and on the inside (its architecture and construction). In order to carry out the project, a working team composed by functional user skilled in the tool was set up and a technical team in charge of evaluating the application and defining the points subject to migration.
Once the changes were defined (detailed specification), the development activities were distributed in 2 working groups:
The first one had to adapt the application for the consumption of a component that would expose the methods for interaction with the GDS. This team did its work in “XP-Xtreme Programming” mode with expert users.
The second expert group in the interaction with the GDS concentrates its efforts in the implementation of the methods required for the interaction with Amadeus, that is to say, it would be in charge of the development of the component with all the necessary methods by the application.
Working in parallel, it was possible to complete the adaptation of the system in a short time. Finally, the components are integrated, basic integration tests are carried out and cooperative work is carried out with the functional users for the validation of the final product.
What makes it different?
The product came on time and did not present problems in the stage of implementation and stabilization of the new Core. In addition, this work carried out “against time” and thanks to the direct interaction with functional users, allowed us to know in depth the operation of the Call Center, its needs and opportunities for improvement.
Later this product evolved and was fully automated in a phase 2 which operated automatically in the backend without manual intervention and later in a phase 3 of the product, it evolved to become the platform of non-presence sales for all channels of the airline with which they currently operate.