Analysis

The first stage in the prototyping methodology is analysis. An investigation of the company and its systems was therefore conducted.

Summary of the Current Systems

Currently, ABC Travel and ABC Corporate share the same LAN and both use a system called Arc to manage all the accounts of the company. This is small accounts package used for small and medium sized companies.

ABC Travel's current computerised reservation system (CRM) is a common package used in the travel industry called Galileo. This searches a database of all airlines across the world and obtain all the latest prices for the required destination.

Summary of the Current Business

User-needs analysis is the process that identifies who the users are and what tasks they will perform. The investigation focussed on each individual category with the aim to conglomerate the requirements of each group to form a set of requirements for the website as a whole.

ABC Travel is divided in to three sections which represent three main categories of customers. The retail division caters for general customers who use ABC Travel mainly because it is their local travel agency. These customers tend to be students, as the main headquarters of ABC is based in New Delhi. They generally require cheap holidays and flights so ABC offer many student deals for people under the age of twenty-six. Additionally, ABC sells rail cards, student cards and travel insurance to these customers.

The corporate division to ABC Travel is for business travellers, or academic staff who are required to travel for work. They have different needs from the retail division, as they do not simply want the cheapest deal, but a convenient journey at a reasonable price and specific dates. ABC therefore offers train tickets, flights, hotels, ferries, car hire and insurance to these customers. A unique service that ABC offers in the corporate division is the option for the academic members of staff to charge the tickets directly to their university, which relieves much aggravation in claiming the money back from the organisation.

The specialist division offers a unique opportunity for the customer to spend time with experienced members of staff at ABC Travel and plan their completely customised holiday from start to finish. These customers are not concerned with price constraints. (Throughout the time of the project however, this division was slowly disembodied and merged into the other two groups due to the large amount of resources it consumed in terms of extra staff costs.)

The customers are divided into three distinct groups: customers under 26 years of age, which includes students, business and academic customers, and generic users who do not belong to either of the two categories. Initially, it had to be decided what method to use when gathering the users' opinions.