A Case Study for External Users

Introduction

The case of study in examination has the goal of realizing a Web application to support an operator of a tourist agency that wants to realize a tourist package according to the requirements of the customer. The operator has to organize the trip starting from the purchase of the flights or the railway ticket up to the booking of the service of car rental, of taxi, of the hotel or other tourist features. The proposed solution has to be that much closer to the demands of the user relative to the destination, to the dates and to the range of price that he/she will have pointed out.

The operator, to get the more proper solution of trip:

• •

  looks among the suppliers of services (fly companies, hotel, restaurants, etc.) those that are able better to satisfy the needs of the customer;

• •

  proposes to the customer the solutions;

• •

  when the operator identifies the pool of elements that better satisfy the requirement, he/she books on behalf of the customer;

• •

  once the confirmation from the supplier is received, the operator receives the payment from the customer;

• •

  After payment (cash or through credit card) is successfully received, the operator will send the confirmation to the suppliers.

The customer has to specify his/her preferences without constraints of pre-arranged solutions: it will be then the operator of the Web agency to take care to combine, according to the expressed demands (schedules, places of departure and arrival, price range, etc.) the results obtained by the various suppliers of services and to propose to the customer the found solutions. Once the customer has chosen the solution, the operator will purchase all of the necessary resources on behalf of the customer. The communication between the operator and the customer and between the operator and the supplier uses the Web as a preferential means. Finally, we observe that, for as it has been introduced, the process could be considered a process oriented at the inside users of the company, but it is studied here applying the methodology for the external users. This because, despite the operator works according to imposed directives (as it normally does in an intranet) he/she has large degrees of freedom in the selection of the price, of the most proper supplier and of the useful combination of the variables to make the travel package. In order to take decisions the operator needs of a navigation different from those that it would have in a classical intranet (for instance, before probably consulting the suppliers that operator, probably, will identify what offers best services at affordable prices for that specific customer); it is for this reason that it is preferred to use the methodological guidelines oriented at the external users.