Entertainment Database
A smarter presentation for Butlins and their cutomers
Background
The Butlins call centre team were handling a large number of enquiries from customers wanting to know which entertainments were appearing during their planned break.
Each request would then be answered through manually searching spreadsheets exported from a central database.
The Butlins web team suggested that these entertainment listings could be made available to the call centre through a web application. Consequently Building Blocks were asked to propose a solution to make this possible.
Solution
Having analysed the database, Building Blocks designed a Service Orientated Architecture. This allowed entertainment data to be accessed by both the call centre and other applications, such as the main Butlins website.
- Fast, accurate testing and spec updating enabled by interactive wireframes
- Detailed functional specification created
- Webservices developed to expose the data
- ASP.NET 3.5 application built to allow call centre team to search and filter breaks based on criteria such as dates, resort, act name, act type and age suitability
- Entertainment details kept up to date automatically
- Entertainment data combined with marketing lead content , stored in SDL Tridion CMS, for easy and consistent management in a single repository
- AJAX used to reduce page refreshes and to allow real time feedback