travelbasys
            

travelbasys is a leading SaaS company within the tourism industry, offering a range of solutions to manage data, payments and accounting. But with the rapid diversification the industry has seen, travelbasys found itself in need of an efficient means of integrating a whole new suite of tools. By implementing Software AG’s webMethods API Gateway, travelbasys has managed to adapt and grow with the industry, securing its place as a mainstay and forerunner in tourism technology.

travelbasys has been a leader in the travel industry and a pioneer in data automation for more than 40 years. Its core system, RBS, was developed with Software AG's Adabas & Natural and is the market-leading back office and administration system for travel agencies all over Germany and Europe. travelbasys has its headquarters in Mülheim an der Ruhr.

Empowering customers to modernise

travelbasys has provided the travel industry with reliable and secure software for their accounting and payment processing needs for the past 40 years. With its Adabas & Natural-based RBS system, the company took on the bookkeeping for an entire industry. But things have changed. While the tourism industry was previously a closed environment with a central reservation system, today the number of systems available in the tourism industry has increased tenfold.

The industry has become increasingly fragmented for various reasons. “For example, individual airlines are increasingly looking for direct connections to the customers, travel agencies, and distribution channels in order to get out of the standardized price ranking,” says Tenbusch. Moreover, demand for real-time, online data consumption has risen dramatically.

“The central reservation system that we’ve been using for 30 years is falling short today. We now have to integrate with more and more connections. The goal is, if possible, to recreate something like the central interface that we previously had,” says Tenbusch.

In order to continue delivering for all of their customers and keep at the forefront of the industry’s evolving standards, Travelbasys has had to revolutionize its systems.

A dedicated gateway

travelbasys has previously had great success with SAG’s Adabas & Natural toolkit, which enabled it to offer its customers a full range of services for bookkeeping, CRM, and archiving with over a hundred interfaces—all without the travel companies ever seeing the IT complexity behind the scenes. It is no surprise that travelbasys opted for webMethods and the API Gateway when the need to modernize arose. “We’ve had a great relationship with SAG in the past. And we want to achieve the best possible integration with the legacy world, while staying at the forefront of the latest technological advancements,” says Tenbusch.

With the help of webMethods, travelbasys can now integrate all of the data silos and establish a single source of truth for real-time data processing—available for thousands of travel agencies to use.

Streamlining API access

webMethods API Gateway enables an organization to securely expose APIs to external developers, partners and other consumers for use in building their own applications on their desired platforms. It provides a dedicated, web-based user interface to perform all the administration and API-related tasks such as creating APIs, defining and activating policies, creating applications and consuming APIs.

In other words, webMethods offers travelbasys’ systems a central, standardized gateway for any communication with other systems.

“With the API Gateway, we can now open up our existing systems and provide an integrated central system much more simply, quickly and efficiently, as opposed to having to reinvent the wheel each time,” says Tenbusch.

Modernizing data management

Equipped with the vast range of integrations made possible by webMethods, travelbasys has been able to both retain current customers by integrating new modern services with its customers' existing systems, and also gain new customers who wanted access to travelbasys’ APIs. It’s able to easily integrate third-party providers used by customers for making credit card payments for instance.

“webMethods has allowed us to add additional partners and interface variants quickly and efficiently, and in a standardized fashion,” says Detlef Ziermann, Software Architect, travelbasys.

Seamless integration

Leveraging webMethods, travelbasys can now offer its customers seamless integration of legacy data into new technologies all while maintaining business continuity. “Our end users can stay up to date while not even noticing that the engine has been replaced.”

This offers a bridge for customers looking to upscale when older systems are no longer sufficient for their larger size and scope.

One such example was a mid-office system for the tourism industry that makes it easier for tour operators, online portals and travel agencies to manage bookings. travelbasys—enabled by webMethods—helped to scale its archive system and implement real-time interfaces for its accounting all while allowing it to integrate its existing archive system and avoid starting from scratch.

“With webMethods we can now offer an all-around carefree package for the customer that extends across multiple apps and systems,” says Tenbusch. “Our customers use the interface to get all the data they need, while travelbasys takes care of the backend.”

Retrieve online data in real time

webMethods has also enabled travelbasys to fulfill the customer expectation that data can be retrieved in real time securely online — not via file exchange at an allocated time each day.

With travelbasys’ upgraded software, a customer simply has to press a button within the systems that they use to query the core system in real time. “They now get the information they need in seconds. This data can be easily pulled by various stakeholders in the pipeline, and they are also able to play it back,” says Ziermann.

This ability to pull data in real time has allowed travelbasys to provide strong support for sales and payment processes.

Standardization and security

Using webMethods also means that travelbasys can now offer uniform guidelines and standardization across the board. This is especially important as travelbasys is subject to stringent certification and documentation requirements due to three important aspects of their work: providing financial accounting for third-party customers, payment processes, and providing tourism data to credit card companies.

Being able to run processes through the monitoring gateway improves travelbasys' ability to run the necessary checks and standardize documentation to fit their customers' requirements—Says Tenbusch, “It is integral to our efficient handling of all of this that we have a stable tool that offers top-quality monitoring in the event of a problem- With webMethods, we can provide necessary reassurances to our customers.”

An investment in the future

“Using webMethods API Gateway has not only allowed us to both secure existing customers and also embark on exciting new partnerships – this new ability to integrate with disparate technologies had helped to future-proof our offering,” adds Tenbusch.

travelbasys has been able to modernize its solution without building from scratch – integrating existing resources and modern tools to stay at the forefront of tourism management software. Using webMethods has meant that it’s able to empower its customers to achieve the same.

“Importantly, it offers control over all of this via a simple user interface, in a central place. No complex coding required,” says Ziermann.