Cornerstone Information Systems (CIS) is a global SaaS technology provider that helps travel companies and corporate buyers do business more efficiently. CIS engaged AltexSoft to build 4site, a journey management tool, that allows travel agents to proactively respond to flight disruptions and recover their customers – business travelers – by rebooking the flights.
Business travel is particularly sensitive to flight disruptions as any delays can jeopardize critical meetings and negotiations. Traditionally, travel agents use the consoles of global distribution systems (GDSs) to find, book, or rebook flights for their customers. As GDSs usually don’t have visual interfaces and notification systems, the travel agents wouldn’t know about disruptions until their clients contact them directly from airports, when the schedule change is already underway. By then, rebooking opportunities for needed destinations keep dwindling as time flies by.
The core value of the 4site product is the ongoing, real-time data sourcing from GDSs. It allows travel agents to be notified about disruptions as early as possible ensuring the highest chances of rebooking and saving the client’s travel from disruption.
The 4site service goal was the creation of a web dashboard for travel agents and a mobile application for travelers. The dashboard had to provide timely and critical information about flight disruptions. The mobile application was to be used to notify travelers about disruptions and provide a channel for live communication with agents. Building this set of services entailed the following challenges:
The 4site web dashboard UX was covered by two UX specialists and a business analyst. The front- and back-end were created by the dedicated team consisting of two Node.js back-end engineers, two front-end JavaScript developers, and two quality assurance experts. A software architect was partly engaged during cloud engineering operations.
The project required a complete mobile and web UX and UI design delivered by two UX and UI specialists.
The technology stack included: Node.js, AWS Lambda, ReactJS, React Redux, and PubNub API.
The web dashboard development was completed in 4 months. The overall 4site project, including elaboration phase and UX design, took 6 months.
We’ve covered the design part in a dedicated Cornerstone 4site UX development case study.
Services provided within the project framework: Travel Technology Practice.