This document provides an overview of strategic plans for Amazing Destinations, a travel agency that is looking to transform its business model from luxury tours to more adventure-based travel. It outlines a proposed evaluation of the current business through a SWOT analysis. It then discusses information system requirements, including a proposed booking system and payment system to modernize operations. The document also covers how the company can transform, including recruiting more IT staff, training existing employees, and appointing a head of IT. It evaluates the feasibility of in-house vs. outsourced development and discusses disaster recovery plans.

1. Information Technology Planning
COMP – 1647
Strategic Evaluation Documents for Amazing Destinations
University Banner ID - 000860665
Table of Contents
Introduction ..................................................................................................................................................2
Amazing Destinations ...................................................................................................................................2
Evaluation of Current Business.....................................................................................................................3
How Are Things? ...........................................................................................................................................3
How Can We Improve The Amazing Destinations? ......................................................................................4
Information System Requirements................................................................................................................4
How Do We Transform?................................................................................................................................5
Initial Development Study (Feasibility Study)................................................................................................7
What If Everything Goes Out The Windows?................................................................................................8
References ....................................................................................................................................................8

2. Introduction
Amazing Destinations
Introduction
Amazing Destinations is a travel agency. Their main focus is upon adventure holidays to destinations
like, Greenland, Alaska, Burma, etc… They had built up loyal client base. The reason for their success is
that they hand out feedback forms at the end of every tour and they reply every feedback with hand
written letter assuring that they will consider client’s suggestions. Their trend is based on luxury tours.
Their customers are mostly 40 to 60 age groups. However, number of bookings has gone south. They
have to reconsider their trend. They decided to change to more rough nature of travel with real
adventure and adrenaline for customers.
Issues
 Some customers don’t like basic living condition
 Travelling to remote destinations inherit some dangers in it
 Some worry about that the communication may be bad in remote destinations
 Marketing will need to improve to make new brand familiar
 New destinations need to select with specialists to make sure they are safe
 Customer service need to improve with new trend
 Not enough man power in IT department
 IT systems are not present or yet not efficient
Future Plans
 Those who don’t like basic living condition will not be eligible to travel
 Management will need to set rules like, age limit to 18 and not allow to travel under 18 unless
accompany by adult over 25
 Those who worry about communication will need to reassure that improvements in
communication nowadays
 Marketing staff will need to improve along with marketing strategies from paper based to digital
to allow potential customers to know what the company is doing.
 Country specialists will be dispatched to potential countries to study the destinations before
deciding to regard as one of the travel destinations
 Customer service staff need to trained about new destinations and update their knowledge and
information
 Regroup the IT team and found new IT department with competent IT workforce in it
 Produce new sets of IT systems for company

3. Evaluation of Current Business
How Are Things?
Strength, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats
SWOT Analysis stands for Strength, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats which are the criteria for
analysing business about how well or not it is doing?; the result of this is to produce better product and
better business.
Strength
 Aged 12 years in travel and tour business and build up 40% loyal clients
 Give feedback forms to clients at the end of every tour and reply suggestions with hand-written
letters which make the clients’ satisfaction.
Weakness
 The number of bookings have fallen during the recent recession
 Travelling to remote destination may make more rough tour for customers
 Communications may be bad in some remote areas
 Young people probably can’t afford for holidays due to high University prices
 Not enough workforce in IT Department and management have many concerns
 No new IT systems developed for 8 years and IT staff are doing nothing apart from support
 There is no website for company present as yet
 Staffs are consider themselves to be technophobes
Opportunities
 Travelling to remote parts of the World will cost less than current luxury tours
 Improvements in worldwide communications allow travellers to keep in touch with their
families even from remote areas
 New marketing strategy of digital marketing will cost less than current strategy over time to
time
 Customers may get real adventure by travelling more remote parts of the World
 The agency needs to sell more holidays to more customer to double the client base and improve
brand reputation to coupe with new margin of holidays
 Government funds available to be spend on disadvantage people
 Directors hope to capture half of adventure market which is worth £30million
 The Country Specialists will be able to go new destinations first-hand to familiar with people
 The marketing strategy must be change from expensive advertisement on newspaper and
magazines to digital marketing
 Customer service staff need to be trained by Country Specialists
Threats
 Marketing strategy is poor
 New destinations must be safe to travel
 Untrained customer service staff
 IT department is no use at all
 No useful IT systems present

4. How Can We Improve The Amazing Destinations?
Information System Requirements
Currently, the agency’s IT department is doing nothing other than giving support to customers with only
two staffs at present and all the bookings are accept by telephone and accept payment with only one
accounting software and there is no online payment system at the moment. So in my opinion, the
company need to have two systems to improve faster services to customers with more convenient way.
The names of those systems are –
 Booking System
 Payment System
Booking System
This system need to be develop to change the booking and reservation of travellers from telephone
based to computerized system which includes both web application and desktop application running
together; so that the customer can use the system from online or if they come to agency, the staff can
use desktop application at the reception desk –
 Customer Information Database
 Booking
 Special Services
Customer Information Database
Whenever the new customer makes booking, the system asks for information and issues a unique
customer Identification number and store in the Customer Information Database and when that
customer make booking, and payments, that customer identification number will be used to query the
information about that customer from the database for the system to remember that customer.
Moreover, the database also records about frequencies of travel he or she made up to over the past 5
years and based on that information, opportunities for special discounts will be offer to customers. This
module creates customer information report to the management level based on daily, weekly, monthly
and annually.
Booking
Customer can make booking from either online or in-person at office using this module. Customer can
book without payment or with payment. The difference is, when there is no payment made to particular
booking, when there is not enough slot available, the slots with no confirm payment will be overwrite
with customers who are willing to pay up front. There are two things this module does. One is
confirming recent reservation with payment or another is creating new entry for booking for new
customer and make payment one-stop. All the information push up to the customer information
database. This module also connects with payment system to accept all types of payment available for
customer to use either online or cash. This module creates booking report to the management level
based on daily, weekly, monthly and annually.
Special Services
This module is for offering special services to those customers who meet the certain criteria to become
special travellers. There should be different classes for customer like Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Platinum.
There will be services entitled to each class and by using this module; agency can offer each customer
with their eligible class of services like 10% discounts, 1 month membership, 2 months membership, 3
months membership. Memberships include free food, free room charges, etc… The memberships vary
with different classes.

5. Payment System
This system is for controlling payments of customers by means of online and offline other than
traditional accounting software and simple database like old system the company used to have. Because
of this new system, customers can make payments for their holidays directly from web whenever they
make booking for their holidays using online payment with credit cards, VISA, MASTER, etc… Actually
even this module is discussed separately, it is unseen module because this also build-in in the booking
system itself. Another thing which is really a breakthrough in the travel sector is that this module also
handles all transactions which the customers made not even in booking but also in their travels. This
information regarding all payments will push up to –
 Payment Information Database
Payment Information Database
This database is required for keeping records of payments make from customers for reporting purposes
to management level, daily, weekly, monthly, and annually. However, there is one thing left to do when
customers make payments from online using credit cards. The system must be able to interface with
international payment systems like VISA, MASTER, etc… or even with banks.
How Do We Transform?
Reasons for changes need to be make
In order to make the agency improved, there will definitely be some changes need to be make with
regards to changes in IT systems. The system will obviously really big and not enough with current
employees. There will be some issues the company will face and need to overcome as quickly as
possible. Some of those issues are –
 Shortage of IT Employees
 No Knowledge in IT
 Hesitate to Use and Refuse to Change Existing System
 Management Don’t Know How and Who to Deal?
Shortage of IT Employees
Obviously we can’t run this new computerized system with only two IT staffs. We need to hire more
employees who meet the criteria to manage, run and give support.
No Knowledge in IT
When changing to computerized system, only IT team is not enough. The system is going to be use by
end-users who are normal employees with no prior knowledge with IT systems.
Hesitate to Use and Refuse to Change Existing System
Not knowing what exactly is what keeps from changing into new environment. We should change this
mind set of employees.
Management Don’t Know How and Who to Deal?
When we change to new system. There should be someone with high rank to deal with management on
daily basis. Currently, management have many concerns with IT and they don’t know who to deal with
when it comes to IT business.

6. Changes need to be make for above reasons
Where there is a disease, there should always be cure. In my opinion the following changes need to be
made to ensure that IT systems success and improvement of Amazing Destinations. They will be the
biggest changes of the company with regards to new IT systems –
 Recruitment of More IT Employees
 Intensive Training Session for Existing Employees
 Group Discussion
 Select and Appoint One Staff as Head of IT
Recruitment of More IT Employees
Currently, the IT team of the company is made up of two employees which is obviously not enough. We
need to strengthen our workforce by hiring more IT employees to run the new system; so that there will
be enough manpower to support the existing employees, should they encounter any problems with new
system.
Intensive Training Session for Existing Employees
The new system cannot run only with more IT staffs. We also need to run intensive short course training
to existing staffs, such as receptionist, cashier, etc… of new system flow and IT knowledge. By doing this,
employees will have more confidence with themselves in using the new IT system.
Group Discussion
Group discussion is one of the requirements to improve the agency. Management should arrange this
discussion with existing employees and IT employees to improve everyone’s knowledge and opinions on
the benefits of using computer system rather than using traditional manual systems. In this way,
everyone from head to toe will know the pros and cons of using computer system.
Select and Appoint One Staff as Head of IT
After everything is in its place, there should be one person who can manage all things to stay in shape.
Management should select one person from the group of IT employees to function as head of IT team to
shoulder the consequences of the whole system. In this way, staffs will be motivated and follow the
head. Moreover, management will know who to contact and who to get information about IT team.
Impacts
Whenever there is a change in organisation, some impacts will definitely have upon employees and
organisation itself. Among them, the following are the most critical impacts that will have when changes
are made upon organisation –
 Insecurities of employees’ mind sets
 Financial impacts upon organisation
 Employees point of view about IT training

7. Initial Development Study (Feasibility Study)
In order to keep in-house development
As of current position of Amazing Destination, they definitely cannot do in-house development.
Obviously the reasons is very clear that they need more of the following to reconsider along with various
costs which associate with those decisions –
 Manpower and Expertise
 Hardware and Software Availability
Manpower and Expertise
Nothing can be done if there is no one to do it. Manpower should be the first factor when considering
development cost. We need enough manpower with good expertise to build the system on our own.
There will be some cost incur to hire developers.
Hardware and Software Availability
After we have enough manpower to build the system, we need additional hardware and software for
the system development, such as bar code scanners, receipt printers and etc…. as the hardware
required to build and test the system. There will also be software requirements for development tools.
Out-source development considerations based on above reasons
This is actually one of the final decisions of feasibility study based on the study of Manpower and
Expertise and Hardware and Software Availability. To be blunt, because of the above reasons, we need
to consider moving into out-source development. Moreover, there will also be other factors which may
or may not need to decide whether to give Out-Sourced or In-House. However, the above two factors
are the main recipes for deciding Out-Sourced or In-House.
In my opinion, this project for Amazing Destinations will probably more efficient if we give to Out-
Sourced development. The reasons are quite clear to me that currently the company not have enough
manpower and expertise to do it by themselves not to mention the hardware and software availability is
very poor. By giving Out-Sourced development, the company can reduce many cost to hiring more IT
staffs with good expertise in development and they can also avoid not only the risk of failure from
unexperienced staffs but also they can get quality training from experienced developers.
On the other hand, we could build our system In-House if we have enough manpower and expertise
with certain advantages over Out-Sourced. If we consider moving to In-House development we need to
found a team of developers with expertise to hire and function as company employees and build the
system In-House. The main advantage of In-House development is obviously the security of system
being develop. Bottom line, the system is only ours and no outside parties will need to know the aspects
and internal operations of the company. Another key advantage is that the company can reduce the
development cost wherever possible which is not possible if doing Out-Sourced or buy from outside.
In-house development considerations
If we are going to do in-house development regardless of how much the company need to spend to
make IT department ready for research and development centre, we need to hire new IT employees and
also outside parties who are more experienced than regular staffs by means of contract. When that
happens, hardware and software requirements will also need to fulfil prior to making in-house
development. In-house development is more secure than out-source as the source codes are not
released to outside which is why can be restrict as needed.

8. What If Everything Goes Out The Windows?
“No one can deny what God wants to do”. That is the motto I want to portray when I’m writing and
explaining about this thing. Everybody and everything have their limits. All of the thing we work so hard
for will be somehow vanished forever without warning. So, as that saying, “Prevention is better than
cure”, we must always be prepared to tackle whatever challenge throw at us. When we talk about
disaster and its recovery, we can categorize the kind of disaster into two main types –
 Natural Disaster
 Man Made Disaster
We can definitely say like this because there is no other way that disaster can cause. When we talk
about Natural Disaster, it include every major problems which are the product of storms, fire, quakes,
etc… Moreover, when we talk about Man Made Disaster, we can take consequences which are the
product of hackers, viruses, etc... In the case of Amazing Destinations, whenever in the event of
disasters which destroy all the servers the company runs on, we must prepare some solutions –
 Disaster Recovery Data Centre (DR Site)
 Real-Time Replication of Data
Disaster Recovery Data Centre (DR Site) For Whatever Problems
This plan is everything about data. We don’t have to differentiate the types of disasters and make plans
for each of them if we make this plan for all of those because this disaster recovery sites will be used for
whatever reasons. We can use these DR sites centres for storm, fire, quakes, viruses, hackers, criminal
activities like bomb threats, riots, and etc… For every IT systems, data is gold. We have to prepare up to
three separate location, another countries or another parts of town to build backup data centres
running together with real-time dedicated connections with primary data centre for disaster recovery.
For better results, I recommend using three different continents for backup data centre locations, such
as in America, Europe and Asia.
Real-Time Replication of Data
Data replication between those data centres will be real-time, ensuring that the data will be back up
every seconds, keeping safe from primary data centre in the event of whatever happen, happen. The
purpose of this is if primary data centre is down for more than 10 seconds for whatever reasons, all the
working data traffic and IP connectivity will be automatically route into nearest backup data centre to
ensure business continuity.
References
Booking Live, 2012. Booking Live. [Online]
Available at: http://www.bookinglive.com/resources/tour-reservation-system
[Accessed 29 September 2014].
Wikipedia, 2011. Wikipedia. [Online]
Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appointment_scheduling_software
[Accessed 29 September 2014].