Saturday, December 11, 2010

TourByMe.com

Comme on l'a vu avec Amadeus, le coeur qui anime l'industrie du voyage se trouve dans le réseau global de distribution (GDS). Aujourd'hui, ce réseau relie les trois secteurs principaux à savoir les fournisseurs de voyage, les agences de voyage et les voyageurs. Mais, comme nous allons le voir, ce noyau de l'industrie n'est pas accessible à tous et en particulier aux voyageurs.

Premièrement, le réseaux de distribution global est surtout utilisé par les B2B (compagnies aérienne, chemin de fer,...) et B2b (eBooker, Kuoni,...), c'est à dire en arrière plan du voyageur. On peut constater ce phénomène à travers l'analyse du Blue Print de la compagnie low-cost Easy-jet.

On constate que le client est mis à l'écart du réseau de distribution où il n'est plus qu'un simple numéro.

Ensuite, les futures tendances d'Amadeus prévoient de rendre plus local le voyage en mettant en avant l'aspect "green". Mais, là encore, le point visé n'est pas directement le voyageur, car, comme mentionné plus haut, le GDS est directement lié aux fournisseurs et aux agences de voyages.

Ainsi, on remarque que le GDS est grand système qui ne peut pas tenir compte des plus petits, c'est à dire, dans le cas de notre industrie, les voyageurs. A ce stade, on observe un fossé entre le détenteur du GDS et les voyageurs.

Il est donc judicieux d'essayer de mieux comprendre le profil du voyageur. Pour cela voici un Empathy Map:

Contexte: Bob est un voyageur de tous les jours. C'est un nouveau venu dans la vie professionnelle, et la notion du voyage intègre aussi bien pour lui, le plaisir comme le travail.

Les points principaux que l'ont peut relever de cet analyse sont, d'une part, la notion d'éparpiller qui sous-entend la multitude de sites et de documentations disponibles, et d'autre part, le gain que peut apporter une bonne opportunité. En synthèse, Bob n'a pas d'outil à disposition avec suffisamment d'information centralisées qui pourrait lui offrir la possibilité de rater moins de bonnes opportunités. Par conséquent, on observe là une des limite du GDS qui se concentre sur les gros clients et n'offrent pas de solution optimale aux consommateurs finaux.

A partir de là, on arrive à formuler un besoin qu'Amadeus ne répond pas. Il s'agit de fournir un système global de distribution qui concernerait principalement les voyageurs. Dès lors et dans cette optique plus focalisée, il est intéressant de se focaliser sur quelques exemples de réseaux de voyageurs en vigueur.

Prenons par exemple Couchsurfing.com. Organisation à but non-lucratif, elle met en place un réseau de voyageurs, lesquels proposent ou recherchent des chambres chez le citoyen pour passer la nuit. Voici le Business Model Canvas de cette plateforme:


Tout d'abords, on constate que le Business Model de cette organisation est basé sur le principe de la gratuité. Le revenu principal repose sur les donations. Ceci dit, pour l'année 2008, la société à reçu plus de 700'000$ de donations, ce qui lui a permis de couvrir amplement ses frais.
(http://www.couchsurfing.org/organization_finances_2008.html)

Avec Couchsurfing.com les voyageurs créent, au sein d'une communauté ouverte, leurs propres "GDS" afin de pouvoir offrir ou bénéficier d'un hébergement sans frais. On en conclut donc que le réseau inter-voyageurs existe et que ça à plutôt du succès (2,3 millions de Couchsurfeurs à travers 241 pays).
(http://fr.wikinoticia.com/monde-et-%C3%A9conomie/Marketing/63972-couchsurfing-la-communaute-ne-veut-pas-de-bruit)

Passons maintenant à l'analyse d'une société qui proposent une solution réfléchie pour sortir localement. Madeinlocal.ch est une start-up de l'epfl qui permet de retrouver ses amis en soirée ou de trouver un bon lieu de sortie en suivant le jugement de ses amis. Ceci dit en passant, bien que plusieurs autres sites proposent quelque chose de similaires, celui-ci à de plus, sans compter la prise en compte de la technologie de géolocalisation, l'assurance d'offrir des résultats non biaisés, grâce à un algorithme qui pondère les moyennes en fonction du jugement de ses amis. Voyons maintenant son analyse au moyen d'un Business Model que voici:


Ici, on observe qu'avec un réseau local de distribution, il est possible de généré du profit par l'intermédiaire de commission que paie les lieux de sortie désireux d'apparaître sur la plateforme.

Suite à cette série d'analyse, nous avons reformulé le besoin. Ce dernier consiste à donner un accès au voyageur à de l'information centralisée afin de lui permettre de saisir les bonnes opportunités et de ne pas rater les expériences de types locales.

En parallèle, une idée nous est parvenue en repensant au Business Model de LEGO et du design pattern du Long Tail vu au cours de e-Business. Cette idée consiste à permettre à un voyageur de proposer son propre tour, qu'il connait bien par expérience et/ou pour avoir vécu dans la région. Le terme tour est à prendre ici au sens large. Il peut aller de la visite d'une ville ou même d'un musée, à la découverte d'un continent. Les voyageurs consultant ce type d'offre sont intéressés par des voyages organisés offrant des solutions avantageuses grâce à l'expérience de l'offrant et qui ont la particularité de sortir du schéma du voyage cliché que l'on peut trouver dans une agence. En bref, le voyageur devient un agent de voyage.

L'idée se développe à travers l'imagination d'une plateforme permettant de relier les voyageurs et offrant des outils pour la réalisation d'un tour (carte google, information sur les transports par région, zone de texte à remplir, lien vers les compagnies de voyage). Il s'agit donc de développer une plateforme, sur un site et/ou une application smartphone, libre d'accès, qui servirait de marché virtuel pour la vente de tour et pour la consultation d'information.

Une fois l'idée en place, nous avons essayé de l'esquisser dans un premier Business Model que voici:

Durant son design des questions ont émergé, comme par exemple la bonne source de revenu, l'attrait pour l'utilisateur, les partenaires nécessaires. Nous avons commencé à transplanter des éléments provenant d'autres Business Model comme la zone "customer" de flickr afin de répondre aux questions soulevées par le premier Business Model. Finalement, nous avons mélangé différents paternes à savoir celui du long tail, du freemium et du multi-sided et recomposer un nouveau Business Model que voici:


Pour conclure ce post, l'analyse de l'industrie du voyage à travers son leader, nous a mené à élaborer, dans une perspective d'entrepreneur, un Business Model d'une société dont le but serait de fortifier le réseau entre voyageurs grâce au web tout en leurs offrant la possibilité de prendre part économiquement dans la vente de tours.

TourByMe.com

Monday, December 6, 2010

The laboratory

For analysis of the travel industry and our company's flagship, we used a series of analytical tools that we have, for the most part, addressed in the course. Among them there are, of course, the Business Model Canvas and its environment, the Strategy Canvas, the Empathy and Proposition Value Map, the graph of the Blue Ocean, the Blue Print, the Revenue Streams description accompanied by a Channel Phases. We also conducted interviews and making a video that tells the evolution of our industry with the advent of the Internet (Travel Industry in Plain English).

In general, these tools allow us to initially approach a problem in a visual order to focus on the basics through a process of group discussion and a mixture of several tests made with the same tools, such as different business models.



The feedstock for the production of such analysis gets through the sheet of paper, sticky notes, felt, white and blackboard, computer, camera, scissors, canvas and even storyboards. The technologies required are numerous, especially in programs like Word, VirtualDub, Gimp or even Blender. The Internet is, quite naturally the cornerstone for the achievement and sharing of data collected through our analysis. Among the sites used, are included, Youtube, Google, Bmdesigner, Gliffy, Amadeus, Blogspot and many others who helped us move forward in our research. The following pictures illustrate some of these tools: (Clockwise from the top: Blender stop motion editing, BM on whiteboard, Blueprint on Gliffy, Storyboard)





Finally, as the common theme in our work, we find, firstly, the analysis focused on the business of Amadeus through which we could observe the mechanism of the travel industry coupled with web technologies. Once our eyes on the industry became more critical, we could go back and observe the industry from above. Thus, in a second time, this general view, but therefore more informed than the original, led us very quickly to a blank area of our industry from large systems and small distribution systems available on the internet. So we took our hats entrepreneurs, and with the help of our minds enlightened by our research and theory discussed in the context of the course, we have outlined, in an experiment where terrible transmutation between business models have been committed after the closure of the library, the business model of a start-up that could bridge the gap in question. Subsequently, we consolidate the design of this business model by implementing some of the tools studied in the analysis of our industry. You will eventually find a post describing this entrepreneur’s idea.




Research on:

- Amadeus.com

- TravelTechnology.com

- View of the market share for the GDS
http://wapedia.mobi/en/Computer_reservations_system

- Forecasted acquisitions for Amadeus that actually took place, for ex. Vacation.com and e-Travel Inc.
http://wiki.media-culture.org.au/index.php/Amadeus

Future trends:
http://www.oef.com/free/pdfs/travelgoldrush2020.pdf
http://www.amadeus.com/amadeus/x157570.html

Amadeus Financial Results:
-
In 2010 http://www.amadeus.com/amadeus/x191166.
- The annual report with consolidated financials statements. It's really good explaining the revenues of Amadeus (page 18):
http://www.investors.amadeus.com/includes/pdf/english/consolidated_financial_statements_dec_07_08_09.pdf

Sunday, December 5, 2010

Amadeus Holistic Business Model


Here above you see the holistic business model for Amadeus, based upon the three separated business models for each of its customer segments, which you can find below. (The dark green post-its in the holistic business model are post-its in common for all of the customer segments.)




segment: travel agencies (down)---segment: travel providers (up)---segment: travellers (down)

Monday, November 8, 2010

Amadeus' Revenue Streams and Channel Phases





As one can see, Amadeus has several sources of revenues (almost all of the streams discussed in the course).

But mainly, Amadeus' revenues come from its Transaction-Based Solutions, in particularly from its GDS (Global Distribution System), and it might combine pricing mechanisms according to the segment targetted. For example, it requires Travel Agencies (mainly) a subscription fee for usage of their GDS solution whilst still applying Transaction fees for every operation performed in their solution.
When acting as an Agent, it gets brokerage fees and when distributing its IT Solutions might get Selling, Leasing or Licensing revenues.


Sunday, November 7, 2010

Travel Industry and Internet - Interviews


Three persons have been interviewed about the change that occurred in the travel industry since the availability of the Internet.

The interviewees are from different backgrounds. We have an employee in the IT field, an environmental manager of a foreign country and a student at EPFL. To preserve their anonymity, the information about them are short, but we know, anyway, they all share the pleasure of traveling.

Thursday, November 4, 2010

Amadeus' Business Model




This is the first Business Model we created for Amadeus. Our understanding of the company was not as deep as it is today, and this is reflected on the evolution of the model of our lasts blogs.

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Amadeus Value Proposition

In this section we analyze the 'what' of a business model. By this, we focus on the center of the business model canvas, more precisely on the value proposition. For this, we choose the biggest customer segment of our company Amadeus: the travel agencies. This one is interesting not only because it's the biggest but also because it is the intermediate segment between travel providers and travel buyers, the other two customer segments of Amadeus.

First, we made an empathy map of Bob, CEO of a travel agency, to understand the customer profile before starting with the analysis of Amadeus' value proposition. To see the empathy map click here or watch the video to build it.



This first approach brings us to reconsider the Amadeus’ values propositions. By questioning ourselves on the profile of a customer segment, we could be able to build a better design for the value proposition. It becomes clearer that this company provides solutions before everything. That's the main VP. Then we found the network as a first need for all the travel's companies. Amadeus have it, knows how to use it and therefore have the key-pass for it. This two VP are related with B2B or B2b business that represent the biggest part of the company activities. The other part is the direct business between the costumer and the company. In this section the VP is a wide offer of travel around the world.


Strategy Canvas based on the Blue Ocean's Analysis

Sabre is the main competitor of Amadeus, in fact, Amadeus was intended to offer a European Alternative to Sabre. These are the reasons why we focused our strategy canvas on this competitor. Besides, the services and products offered by both giants are very often the same.


Surprisingly, despite being created after it, Amadeus overpassed Sabre on many aspects, except that Sabre keeps its leadership in NorthAmerica as a GDS and Solutions provider.

Friday, October 15, 2010

Travel Industry Environment - Mapping

Travel Industry

This industry has been particularly transformed by web-based technology.

The changes that the industry has been through range from the transaction /information exchange between traveling companies, the emerging of dot com (specially ticketing) companies to the introduction of sophisticated applications and devices to enhance the traveling experience ( like Smart Phone applications).

Today, the traveling industry is a different one than 10 years ago.


Travel Industry Mapping Exercise
Being a wide industry, it touches many sectors: tourism, business traveling, transportation (airlines, rail services, bus services, shipping, commuting), hotels, luxury resorts, etc. Therefore, a mapping of its environment resulted multifaceted and somehow imprecise. We therefore decided to highlight some features of the company we particularly wanted to study for the E-Business Course.
Our company of study: AMADEUS!
Then, we added different color post-it’s (pink, blue, green) to our industry mapping (yellow), to indicate the particular features of this company.















INDUSTRY Forces

- Ubiquitous in nature, but with a strong and fierce competition among the participants within the industry.

- Worldwide Market and Operations

- 24/24 hours availability but it also applies to competitors and substitute services











KEY Trends

-
Social and demographic phenomenon: immigration

-
Traveling trend = the world becomes smaller















MARKET Forces

-
Fierce competition for market share due to the Low-Cost emerging services

-
B2B, B2C, B2b business models














MACRO ECONOMIC Forces

-
General recovery after the financial crisis

-
Market and Economic conditions are often country-dependent














AMADEUS
Amadeus is a leading supplier of transaction based solutions within the global travel and tourism industry. It provides transaction processing power and technology solutions to both travel providers (including full service carriers and low-cost airlines, hotels, rail operators, cruise and ferry operators, car rental companies and tour operators) and travel agencies (both online and offline).

Amadeus Business Model

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Case Study MS Office Business Model Environment

INDUSTRY Forces

MS Office is the dominant player in its sector. However, competitors are offering substitute products that are free and easy to get either by downloading like Open Office or by free access on-line to web based applications like Google Docs and Zoho.

The force of these substitute products rely on their availability and multi-platform adaptability, in some cases, and mainly of course on their free cost for the final user.

Nevertheless, the change resistance experienced by most users has allowed MS Office to remain the leader in its sector. According to different surveys (i.e. Forrester), most companies are planning to upgrade to the newest versions of Office and do not plan to move to an alternative application fearing, among others, lack of seamless interoperability with other applications and user’s resistance.

MS Office’s partners OEM, play an important role in the business model installing and distributing MS Office software. By doing this, they initially capture users that later will highly probably stick to the product. The same will probably happen with users of Office Web Apps for Facebook.

KEY Trends

MS Office’s market is world wide.

When regulations are created and applied to protect the brand and limit the use of the software to legal customers, it influences the business model by increasing the company’s control over the use of the product and hence increasing revenues. In the same way, by increasing or decreasing taxes on the buying of the product, there will potentially be more or less customers.

Higher revenues in a country will give as a result a higher legal use of the product. The demographic distribution between urban and rural areas also impacts the sales of the product.

Piracy is a trend that strongly influences MS Office’s market. People’s tendency to use the product illegally has extended to all societies and all income levels, because of the easy access to it, restricting then the control on the use of the product.

Tactile and online tools are invading the technology market. People don’t necessarily have to use MS Office suite to produce a beautifully-designed presentation. That threatens MS Office market.

MARKET Forces

The main market issues are that competitors will offer cheaper products with similar quality, or offer it with a higher quality at the same price like Live Document. Another issue is that customers are constantly demanding lower prices.

Microsoft Office users are mainly business and individuals. But revenues largely come from business, and even though most business presently using MS Office prefer not to move to an alternative product, Microsoft needs to be aware of competitors, who are constantly trying to conquer a bite of the market.

We find that there is a growing segment of elderly people that are starting to work with computers, so in the future, Microsoft might want to develop a strategy to target this do not segment by creating a simplified version of the Microsoft Office package.

Even though some geographical regions such as Latin-America or Africa are experiencing a big growth, there are also some areas such as China, where sales do not necessarily increase, due to the illegal software download market.

Customers want to increase the efficiency and maximize their productivity. In order to achieve that, customers need to have a more user-friendly version of the MS Office package with an extended problem solving tool.

Moreover, they want a program in which they can have all the information, their agenda, etc.
There are rather switching efforts than switching costs because a lot of people are used to work with the Microsoft operating system.

Microsoft also has a strong brand, enough reason for the customers to stick to MS Office. However, the company needs to be aware of the illegal downloading trend and free software from competitors. Revenues mainly come from high margins of licenses, because right now the customers have no influence on the software price. In the future, Microsoft will have to take into account that customer's power might increase.

MACRO ECONOMIC Forces

Due to the global recession that hit the market two years ago, the market, in general, is starting to slowly recover. However, market conditions (GDP, unemployment rate, etc.) strongly depend on the geographical region. An example of this fact is that the USA has a lower unemployment rate and is more rapidly recovering from the recession than other countries, such as Spain, Italy, Greece or Latin-America.

The economic infrastructure also depends on the region Microsoft is selling their products to. There are wealthier areas with good public services, good supplier access, high life quality, high taxes, etc. that can have easier access to MS Office, but there are also poorer regions that experience difficulties in reaching it.

As a consequence of the global recession, banks have limited the credit availability. Because of this, companies have had difficulties to obtain funds. However, Microsoft as an established brand, and has managed to survive.

The main resource of MS Office is software developers. Therefore, the main costs are labor and intellectual property costs. These costs can be reduced by outsourcing.

INFLUENCE ON THE BUSINESS MODEL in the Future


Activities:
  • enhance marketing activities, to maintain the market share
  • extend the customer support
  • integrate new technology trends into the product development, in order not to lose segments of the market
Value proposition:
  • Lower prices and higher quality software
Resources:
  • Software developers that are skilled at the new technologies (headhunting + training)
Partners:
  • More alliances with strong technology leaders (as with Facebook)
  • Reinforce relationships with governments in order to world widely approve laws against illegal downloading
Segments:
  • target a new customer segment: the elderly people
  • less developed geographical areas

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Project group E-business 2010 is

  • Ana Abraira
  • Brenda Beltran | brexls
  • Pascal Chollet | chollet.pascal
  • Martin Des Crescenzio | ni-2m1
  • Linde Vloeberghs | lindevloeberghs