SCL's successful launch with TUI Travel PLC reinforces UltraPoS's footprint on the UK high street
21st April 2008 12:00am
On the 8th April 2008 the last of TUI Travel's 960 Thomson Retail and First Choice branches went live with SCL's UltraPoS travel money automation system.
The staged launch, which began on March 18th 2008, has resulted in all First Choice Holidays PLC and TUI AG outlets being able to sell, buy and replenish all their Foreign Exchange and Travellers Cheques through the same, fully-connected system.
This is the first jointly negotiated supplier contract of the enlarged organisation to go live since the two high street giants became TUI Travel PLC back in September 2007, and it is to set the precedent for many more of its kind to follow.
TUI Travel PLC have now become one of SCL's largest UK customers in terms of outlets and since day one they have been consistently putting through significant numbers of transactions.
As well as a feature-rich point of sale trading system, UltraPoS provides TUI Travel with a fully-functional wholesale currency ordering system that sends both currency and travellers cheque orders and currency returns directly to American Express for fulfilment.
After a long review of all of the leading POS systems, TUI chose SCL's UltraPoS because of its flexible nature as a system that could be moulded around their business and improve the control and visibility of their travel money operations.
Specifically, the following standard functions were of particular importance: real time reporting, pop-up screens displaying sales messages for advisors, integrated post code look-ups, as well as full rate and margin management. In addition further features were custom-developed for TUI highlighting the flexibility of UltraPoS.
TUI's deployment of UltraPoS also eliminates many time-consuming manual processes, such as the entry of TC stock. This has been replaced with an automatic 'trust receipt' which puts the inventory directly into the branch's system for acceptance into stock.
In addition to these functional advantages there was an immediate synergy and positive working relationship between the companies which has continued on throughout the entire implementation period.
It's a tribute to the commitment and professionalism of both teams that the entire deployment was successfully implemented in just four months, including integration with TUI's back office systems.
The project delivery was subjected to extremely tight time scales in order for UltraPoS to be fully operational before the peak season began.
The training alone was an enormous operation with around 7000 members of staff needing to be familiarised with the system.
The training took two different directions with the majority of staff receiving full interactive classroom sessions and an e-learning programme for the remainder.
In UltraPoS, SCL have provided TUI Travel with a system that allows them to trade in a wide variety of products not limited to bank notes and travellers cheques but also pre-paid cards and other travel related financial products. They therefore have a system ready to grow and change with their business.