It's been a looooong time! Between 2015 and 2018 I worked for a tourism company and as the increasing responsibilities grew along with my now 9 year old son, I found myself with less time to reflect on the information seeking and organizing aspects of my work and projects. Working for that company gave me loads of opportunities to learn about myself as well as learn how business information is/can be organized. We used a variety of applications for a variety of business operations, such as:
Reservations:
We used Google Calendar to organize the reservations and see what availability we had to meet additional reservation requests. In my 2.5ish years with the company (and the company was 9 years old when I joined), this system gave way to an online reservation system created by Peek Pro. (There was another provider that was considered, Fare Harbor, which from my estimation had a really solid database foundation, but the company went with Peek Pro and Peek was very supportive after the category 5 hurricane Maria struck Vieques, so they are good people over there.) Cool things this did was automate email confirmations, create alerts when over booking a specific tour and eventually easing multi tour reservations, making them much faster by capturing the contact and payment information in a cart. Oh, and allowing bookings to be made from home in the comfort of visitors' pajamas while we were asleep.
Tour Assignments (for the Guides):
At the beginning, this was a spreadsheet and a calendar and a phone. When the company moved to Peek Pro, this quickly morphed to automated text message alerts or app notifications as the manager (me) only had to click a button and the software took care of the rest. For guides with data/wifi capable phones, they only had to open their notifications to receive a link with all the information needed for their assignments.
Equipment and Fleet Inventory and Assignments
For our bicycles, snorkel gear, kayaks, paddleboards, lifevests, scuba gear, paddles, ratchet sets, etc, etc, we used Google Sheets on Google Drive for the longest time. The company was in the process of converting to an online rental procedure after Hurricane Maria, but due to a misunderstanding of how the database worked, it never got off the ground. And then the company sold the business to new owners, so we didn't really get to test the feature prior to the sale. I can say that using Google Sheets served our purpose..., but only if all the staff who processed reservations and checkouts actually used the sheet, so it was good about 75% of the time.
For our vehicles, we used Google Calendar to inform staff of which vehicle was in maintenance, which vehicle was being used by which activity, etc, until Peek came along and allowed us to include vehicle assignments to the tours. Another useful thing about Peek was that it pushed certain information to our Google Calendar, so for staff who were used to reading the Calendar, they could still get a lot of info there.
There was the issue of logging vehicle use and maintenance. We used paper forms. Only by "used," I mean to say that we didn't. I was in the process of converting forms to a Google Doc form that could be filled out in the cell phone, but then Maria struck and we didn't have cellular data for 4 months... or internet for 6ish months.
Communications
As with any company (and we, at our peek, were four locations with forty staff), communication was essential and one of our hardest things to do. We used Skype to send messages to retail staff across the stores. We used email for the managers. We used cell phone calls and texting for guides. Towards the end, I was holding monthly staff meetings, but really, we only had one yearly meeting with the owners, though the managers got together about every 2 months.
Time Sheets
I hate paper time sheets! You are gonna write that down, so that I can then collect it (if I can find it and if you actually submitted it) and enter the data into a spreadsheet, so then I can submit that and the man who holds the purse strings can enter it into another spreadsheet? Yeeeeeaaaaaaah... no thanks. I would have liked to have seen this feature become automated.
Retail
We used Microsoft Dynamics POS, which was installed to one computer at our main store. Being limited to one POS is a horrible way to process transactions. One computer for entering incoming inventory. One computer for printing labels. One computer for ringing up customers. One computer for pulling inventory reports. One computer for tracking staff purchases on accounts. You get the picture.
We were in the process of thinking about converting to another product that was cloud based and allowed a staff member to do inventory on the floor with a hand held device while another staff member was ringing a customer up at the register (and there was an optional register that could move around with a staff member). This service is popping up all over Vieques and I can't for the life of me remember what it is called.
Social Media / Marketing
Facebook, Instagram, Follow Up Emails, TripAdvisor, a website - all the time. YouTube, Yelp - some of the time. Google Ads, Facebook ads - all the time. Print ads in the local Vieques magazine, an airline magazine, the PR Tourism Company magazine, and a monthly newspaper for boaters- all the time.
Data Backup
A structured process for backing up data? Not that I could see.
Other Systems
There were business processes that were above my pay grade.
And that's what I remember at the moment. I hope to use this knowledge for good in the future. I certainly have a respect for organizational processes and flow of information in a large organization, and for the need for them.
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