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Seamless, integrated IT - we have a long way to go!

Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2013-04-11 07:40:15 - Graham Ellis

If it's Monday, it must be Cheltenham and almost every night a different bed. This is a week of crisscrossing the UK, with four septate courses / sessions scheduled in five days. The logistical administration is far from easy, showing just how far we still have to go on IT systems in this area. A lift to the station, geographic layouts of towns to help select the area for hotels then finding one with the right facilities and a sensible price. And the whole matter of train times, train fares, and so forth.

If only I could type the following into a box on a web site

I want to set out from home late on Sunday afternoon, travel to Cheltenham and stop overnight in a hotel there and train at [place] from 09:00 to 17:00 on Monday. I then travel to London, stay overnight, and train at [place] on Tuesday and Wednesday, at at [place] on Thursday, returning to Cheltenham that evening to train at the same place that I was an on Monday on Friday. When I'm done, I want to travel home for the weekend. Preference are: a) Rail travel b) Interesting hotels c) I'm paying myself and want to keep to a sensible budget.

And have it come back with times, hotels, local transport links, prices, and a box into which I can make a single payment. I can then print out or download my ticket for the week and a link for "what if I have to change my plans?" and "what if a train gets delayed".

Alas, we are truly a long way from the data co-ordination which is possible but missing as yet:
• Train bookings - one site (with a requirement to visit a different station prior to my first journey to collect tickets)
• Hotel bookings - two sites
• London travel - separate Oyster card
• London travel - separate lookup for the right bus route for me
• Three map lookups to find details of my work places
And then made worse by my Thursday customer postponing (decision made on Tuesday) to give them more organisation time.

It's actually much worse than eight times the work I should need to do as I have to manually flip between sites, co-ordinating the resources that I'm booking to make sure they all tie in.