When Is the Best Time to Upgrade Your Travel Software?

Specialist Travel Software Will Save You Money

Are you thinking about upgrading your travel software but not sure of the right time to commit? When is the best time to upgrade you ask? I say “DO IT NOW”.

From the Sales Manager of a software company, you could expect that answer I suppose. In my defence, I am thinking of your best interests. Your software upgrade should create efficiencies and those efficiencies should generate Return on Investment (ROI).

I say should because this will only happen if you have done due diligence, really researched potential software solutions for your travel business and selected the best solution. Capterra recently released a report on software buying trends for 2013 and amazingly a 1/3 of software purchases happened without a demonstration of the software. That sounds like a giant leap of faith. Don’t leap, make a sound business decision.

How can you be sure software will work for you without a trial? If you would like to see Tourwriter in action- all you have to do is ask.

Upgrading your travel software should create benefits, the flipside is no upgrade will lead to stagnation and you should identify the costs to your business of not changing, of not moving forward.

“If you always do what you’ve always done, you will always get what you always got” – source unknown

As our unknown source implies it is easy to continue each day as the last finished. Change does require work. The Harvard Business Review has an article here listing Ten Reason people resist change.  I’ve condensed it down to the Top 4 reasons for you:

1. More work. – There is no denying it. You will have to invest resources for successful change. The more you invest (even if it just a mental commitment)  the easier the process will be.

2. Fear of unknown – You cant hide from fear, so open the door and let fear in.

3. Everything seems different – People often tell me they want to change, they then put up walls as the changes begin.

4. Loss of Control If you are feeling any of these emotions it is safe to say you are not alone. Fear of the unknown is common amongst us all. If your business wants or needs to grow, to achieve efficiencies, it will most likely need to change, to adapt to changing business environments. And remember: If your competitors are adopting new technologies you will always be playing catchup.

Understand the predictable reasons of resistance and then strategize around them.

If you know there are better ways your business could be operating but your not sure of the first steps to climbing the ladder of success, below are some helpful tips.

1. Identify areas you can improve your processes. These will be your goals. ie You currently spend 2 hours preparing a quote and you want to slash that to 15 mins.

2.Create a business plan around these goals enabling to create an action plan. Your plan should all be designed to achieve your vision.

3. Implement a Key Performance Measurement strategy. ie Analysis your average week for time spent on creating quotes to work out an annual cost. Run this against potential benefits to calculate potential gains.

4. Measure, Review, Take Action. This should be an ongoing cycle. Review on a quarterly cycle to identify changes or areas to improve. Measuring your business performance is an essential element for creating an effective change management strategy.  It will provide you with the information you need to know what needs changing. Think of the key factors that impact your success criteria and start measuring them and linking them to your action plans.

Einstein said “Insanity was doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”

If you are ready to change talk to the team at Tourwriter. We will analyse your business to ensure we can generate efficiencies and provide a great Return on Investment for your tour operator software upgrade. Tourwriter licence agreements (and your licence fee) are renewed every year. This means we need to provide ongoing ROI to retain clients. We are always developing Tourwriter so your business systems will continue to evolve.