Transport Information Management System (TIMS)
Case Study

Background

Leisure Target Tourism Services (LTTS) is the largest distributor of tourism information publications across eastern England. The company distributes around 18 million publications to over 5000 outlets and Tourist Information Centres on behalf of 250 attraction owners through a fleet of 20 vans.

It is imperative for LTTS to be able to accurately record the number of leaflets delivered to each outlet as this enables them to produce performance reports against their contracts with their clients - the tourist attractions. These reports indicate how many leaflets have been taken by the public, and allow attraction owners to see which outlets and geographical areas are the best channels for marketing their attraction to the public.

Existing System

Formerly LTTS used a Windows based database system that had been adapted for them from a proprietary stock control system. Poor system design meant that as the volume of data increased, the system dramatically slowed down, with some reports taking 20 minutes to generate! The final straw was a system update in late 2006 that introduced further bugs and effectively made the system unreliable.

Andrew Hird, Managing Director of LTTS, knew that something had to be done. He said “Not only was the system causing us significant frustration but it stood in the way of our vision to provide best of breed information to our customers. It was also holding back our strategic growth, because if we can’t prove how effective we are, it’s difficult to gain new contracts with major players in the industry”.

Andrew had met Richard Case, Director of Perceptis, a few months earlier on another project. “The thing that struck me about Perceptis was that they seemed open and honest and I felt that I could really trust them. Richard also seemed to really understand the issues we were facing and was clearly very experienced in IT”.

Like many smaller businesses with no in-house IT expertise Andrew feared throwing good money after bad, but with the new tourist season approaching he decided to call Perceptis to see if they could help.

Requirements

A no-obligation meeting was set up and Andrew commissioned Perceptis to spend two days with LTTS going through the operating procedures of the company with the challenge to provide a fixed cost proposal to completely replace their existing system.

Perceptis suggested an Internet delivered solution as this would give LTTS several advantages. Remote workers such as the LTTS Merchandisers who drive the vans, could access the system and print off their delivery round sheets from home; Andrew himself, who often used to visit the office at weekends, could access the system from home and Perceptis could also access it instantly without needing to travel to East Anglia, thus massively reducing maintenance & support costs.

Most importantly, by making the system run across the Internet, this paved the way for customers to be able access key reports and information whenever they like via the LTTS website - a later phase of the project.

Andrew placed the order with Perceptis in January 2007 and with deliveries for the new season due to start on 26th February in time for the Easter rush, the deadline was extremely tight! “Perceptis were very realistic about how long the system would take to develop and reduced the risk by identifying the key features and ensuring those were developed first. They also helped me to decide what features were not essential and some of these were put into a second phase”.

Initial Development

Some weekend and evening working in the first few weeks got the project ahead of schedule and took the pressure off in the later stages. TIMS (Target Information Management System) system was first demonstrated to Andrew when he visited Perceptis’ offices in early February. “I didn’t know quite what to expect, but the system they showed me way exceeded my best expectations. It was totally different from the system we had before but it was so easy to use by comparison. Perceptis had clearly really thought about how we would use the system in practice and put themselves in our shoes”.

Putting effort in up front to get the system design and, most importantly, the database design right, meant the system was built on a solid foundation and that the issues LTTS had faced with their existing system would not recur.

Richard Case said “Faced with a tight deadline like this many companies would cut corners and start writing code straight away - but this is a big mistake. Getting the design right is absolutely fundamental to the success of the project and actually saves you time in the long run because you don’t have to re-work your code when problems inevitably occur later”.

The ‘proof of the pudding’ was when the system had to generate real reports from the data in the system. Perceptis wrote a piece of simulation software which followed LTTS’ delivery pattern and inserted the same volume of data into the database as if the system was in real use. This allowed them to test the system’s performance with a full season’s set of data with more than 500,000 records in the delivery history.

Andrew commented “I couldn’t believe how fast it was. The report that used to take twenty minutes was produced in less than three seconds and this was with the system working across the Internet”.

Testing, Deployment & Security

Having gained Andrew’s confidence, Perceptis were able get the system completed and fully tested more than a week ahead of schedule and this gave LTTS extra time to input all their client contracts and prepare for the manic six week period when they have to get the first batch of publications delivered before the tourists flood in at Easter.

Security was also an issue. TIMS is hosted in a large data centre with the hard disk being imaged every night and staff on call 24x7 to replace any defective hardware. In addition Perceptis also take their own daily backup of LTTS’ data.

Where the system needs to write to multiple database tables these are done as ‘Transactions’ which either completely succeed or completely fail. This prevents the database ending up in an inconsistent state should a disk failure ever occur during a write operation.

Key Functionality

TIMS allows LTTS to store details of all their customers and leaflet delivery contracts with those customers. The system allows LTTS to record which areas each publication is contracted to be delivered to. TIMS also holds details of every outlet (hotel, B&B, motorway services, railway station, supermarket, Tourist Information Centre etc.) in each area.

The system automatically builds the delivery schedule and the list of publications to be delivered to each outlet. The Merchandisers record how many publications have been delivered to each outlet and together with the date and time, this information is then fed into the system to produce a delivery history and update the central stock quantities.

The system produces a range of reports that allow customers to see the progress of their publications and allow LTTS to monitor and manage the efficiency of the operation to help customers shift slow moving publications by targeting them for Localised Intensive Distribution (LID), where certain publications will be offered to all appropriate retail premises with a localised area. Likewise, if the uptake of a publication is much better than expected, then the customer can print additional quantities. LTTS also uses the data to advise customers on print quantities for the next season.

Further Developments

Following the success of the original project TIMS has been further developed in phases. Perceptis have redeveloped LTTS' website and now customers can directly access their distribution reports by logging into the website. Additionally, Tourist Information Centres are now able to order publications online which LTTS then post to them.

The reporting functionality in the system has been significantly added to and most recently, TIMS has been updated to bring the control of the Local Intensive Distribution deliveries within the system. Further developments to allow bespoke distribution contracts are planned for addition in the coming year.

LTTS have also appointed Perceptis as their marketing partner which includes Perceptis fully managing a number of websites, writing regular electronic newsletters, a public relations services as well as a range of traditional and digital marketing campaigns.