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Longhaul
tour operators Cruise
specialists Shorthaul
and charter Car
and passenger ferries Train
operators Holiday
parks and cottages Retail
travel agents Inbound
tour operators Groups
and conferences Web
design Live
Web booking engine How
to find us Ongoing
support Training
at Osprey |
HELPLINE, NEW RELEASES, TELEPHONE AND EMAIL SUPPORT, ADVICE AND
GUIDANCE
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| Don't rush your decision, and remember that we shall be there to
support you over the years to come |
INITIAL TRAINING, CUSTOMISATION, SETUP, AND TRAININGThe
once-off licence fee includes advice, guidance, conversion of your
current customer names and addresses (providing they are in a
suitable format), unlimited free training in Osprey classrooms,
onsite support (travel and hotels are extra), a reasonable amount of
customisation, and unlimited helpline support
ONGOING SUPPORT SERVICESOsprey provides ongoing support
called SDSS (Software Development and Support Subscription) for a
monthly fee depending on which modules are chosen. SDSS entitles you
to unlimited helpline support (phone, fax, email, dial-in, internet
access, video conference, telephone conference), with the objective
of providing fixes, workarounds or enhancements to get you out of
trouble.
- The helpline is open during normal office hours (08.30 to
17.00 UK time) Monday to Friday. Support is also available outside
these hours by prior agreement for unusual situations.
- Unlimited training in Osprey classrooms for new staff,
executive seminars, and refreshers for old staff
- Provision of new releases of the modules you have licensed.
Updates and improvements go out on a weekly basis.
- We like to come to you for regular on-site visits (travel and
hotel costs are chargeable) if we can.
- Advice and guidance on the best way to do things is gladly
given, and often leads to free enhancements!
DEVELOPMENTSWe are actively adding new enhancements to the
base system, and also offering new add-ons all the time. Our
development is driven by customer requests, and new releases of the
software are included in the monthly support subscription
However, if you need something really unusual that other
customer are not interested in, or if you want something exclusively
for you that the others don't have, then you may request special
enhancements and modifications to the software. We will study your
requests free of charge, and then submit a price quotation for you
to consider.
BUGSIn the case of software problems a bypass solution will
be provided as soon as the problem is isolated, but we need your
help to reproduce any errors. Software errors will be corrected as
soon as possible and fixes delivered by e-mail or over the Internet.
HARDWARE, NETWORK AND WINDOWSWe will order your new
database server, configure and install it with Windows Server2008,
SQL Server 2008, IIS, and our software. We will set up an automated
overnight backup and provide a setup.exe for your users.
However, Windows desktop problems are not normally included
in this support, but we will help if we can, on an informal basis.
We are a systems provider, not IT technicians.
HOSTED SOLUTIONSIf you are small, or geographically
scattered, or have staff who work from home, or if you just simply
want someone else to look after the IT, then we can offer you a
fully-hosted solution. You still need to come to our classrooms for
the initial training, but then you will be able to access your own
system from anywhere with an internet connection.
HISTORYA long time ago, the system was designed from the
gound up as a multicentre tour operating system. the underlying
structure was always a relational database. Our customers are mostly
longhaul or specialists, but as well as tour operators, we have
retail agents, train operators, ferry companies, holiday parks and
inbound operators. Our software was originally written for the IBM
AS/400 (now known as the i-series). In the 1990s with the advent of
Windows and new languages with sparkling features, we completely
redesigned our system from 'green-screen' DOS-style displays, to
take advantage of scrolling grids, dropdowns, text boxes, images,
radio buttons, tabsheets, and all the now current goodies. The code
was completely rewritten using Windows and Microsoft development
tools. However, we kept the underlying multi-centre design, and
brought in masses of new features not least laser-printed documents,
MS fonts, emails everywhere as well as graphical presentation of
management reports in pie-charts and graphs, with Excel downloads.
Connectivity to the database is via SQL select, update, insert and
delete statements. We still have a small handful of very large
customers running on the AS/400, which is bullet-proof, scaleable,
and fast. The user interfaces, however have all been redesigned to
take advantage of data grids, scrolling, unlimited text boxes,
laser-printed reports, etc, and the DB/400 interface is also via
SQL/400 statements which are a bit different from Microsoft's. New
customers now, however, can take advantage of the huge advances in
Intel technology - but if you really, really, really want a proper
grown-up tour operating system to run on an IBM AS/400 but with
proper Windows GUIs (not screen-scraped), please give us a call.
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