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Gold Medal Travel Turns to IBM Analytics to Meet New Reporting Requirements

Travel agency to use IBM Cognos TM1 software to meet additional reporting requirements following acquisition by Thomas Cook

August 25, 2009

IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced that Gold Medal Travel, one of the UK's leading travel agencies, will use IBM analytics technology to meet additional reporting requirements following its acquisition by The Thomas Cook Group. The additional workload is handled by IBM software in partnership with IBM Cognos partner, ICIT Business Intelligence Limited, and replaces the need to recruit additional staff.

Prior to the acquisition, the Gold Medal Travel finance team was using IBM analytics technology for daily analysis of bookings and sales across 130 of the world's leading airlines to 1,500 destinations and 30,000 hotels worldwide each year. This process allowed Gold Medal Travel to drill down into profit margins and make informed decisions on marketing tactics and special offers to potential customers. The company was required to produce additional reporting, which includes reports on a daily, weekly, four weekly and calendar monthly basis.

However, Gold Medal Travel's existing structure recorded revenue at the moment sales are booked, in contrast to Thomas Cook, which registered revenue only when the customer departed on holiday. This dual approach resulted in a reporting requirement for both departure and booking of holidays as an integrated single reporting structure.

The acquisition by Thomas Cook meant that the finance team needed to continue managing this data effectively while complying with the Thomas Cook Group standard reporting structure.

For further information visit: www.ibm.com

Executive quote

"Major acquisitions can present finance teams with huge challenges," said Ged Simmons, country manager, IBM Cognos business intelligence and performance management, UK and Ireland.

"With IBM analytics, Gold Medal Travel can manage both its existing reporting structure and Thomas Cook's, because all the data does not need to be re-entered twice. The reporting hierarchy within this structure allows the users to interrogate the data and report on it in different dimensions. This ensures that both businesses continue to manage the essential data without additional workload and can continue to make smart informed business decisions," he added.

Customer quote

"The acquisition meant that we needed a system in place that could integrate two separate reporting structures, which had the potential to cause a huge additional workload," said Steve Bacon, Finance Director at Gold Medal Travel.

"With IBM analytics, our finance team will be able to manage the additional reporting workload from the acquisition, without having to run up additional staffing budgets. The IBM Cognos TM1 Management Information cubes mean that we can easily absorb the need for additional staff due to the system’s ability to store and analyse data,” he added.

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Gold Medal Travel Turns to IBM Analytics to Meet New Reporting Requirements

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