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CruisePak Product Suite
In addition to the main CruisePak application, several other applications useful to travel agency operations are also provided. Together, these products comprise the CruisePak application suite. CruisePak (The Primary Application) CruisePak is customer relationship management software (CRM) that manages a travel agency's cruise, tour, and general travel bookings. CruisePak has strong group management features, advanced target marketing capabilities, internal and integrated accounting capability, full accounts payable and receivable, and the ability to integrate with supplier websites and tools to finalize travel purchases. CruisePak Inventory Manager CruisePak Inventory Manager is used to define inventory allocations that you will sell from. For example, if you block a group of cabins, you can define the cabins and then select the Local Inventory Network option from the menu on the client, reservation, or any of the details screens to see the inventory definitions, what's available, the price, etc. The Inventory Manager can also be used to define List Item pricing so that one can easily click on a listed item and have it fill in the appropriate detail form (cabin, tour, air, hotel, car, etc.) CruisePak Setup CruisePak Setup is used to configure CruisePak. This application is used to add vendors, ships, agents, and specify CruisePak system defaults. Due to security reasons, CruisePak setup is now contained in a separate application. CruisePak Sequential Mail CruisePak Sequential Mail is an email marketing tool designed to perform bulk emailings. With Sequential Mail, one can build targeted email lists and send them email messaging detailing their product offerings. Furthermore, Sequential Mail can perform Sequential Electronic Email Marketing Campaigns. That is, a series of pre-designed email messages, sent to a group of individuals, without them ever getting the same message twice. This is critical and guards against the perception of SPAM. Sequential Mail is the best means to communicate with large groups. CruisePak Quicksend Often during the business day, prospective customers just want an e-brochure, or some other quick document. What Quicksend does is allow you to pick your predesigned email messages / attachment files and send them without use of your email program. Normally, when customers request information, admin people open up their email program, search their drafts folders, or type the same message over and over again and send it out. Quicksend avoids all this thereby saving you time and money. Type the email message once, and be done. Sending then becomes as easy as pick and send. CruisePak RSS CruisePak RSS is both a RSS (Really Simple Syndication) News reader and Editor. Not only can you read Newsfeeds with CruisePak RSS, but you can also use it to publish Newsfeeds for your agency. These Newsfeeds can be read by your customers using their favorite Newsreaders from Yahoo, MSN, and more. Newsfeeds are the politically correct way of notifying your customers about your business offerings and are the preferred means of communicating with mass, unsolicited groups of customers. Post your newsfeed links on various sites and customers will come!. CruisePak Netbar CruisePak Netbar provides quick access to supplier networks which are integrated with CruisePak. We have Amadeus Cruise, we are going to get air car and hotel, we have iTravelInsured, and we are going to get more and more. The core CruisePak application is integrated with supplier network(s) to ease booking, Netbar provides the means to do quick lookups without CruisePak. Just one more ease of use feature included with the product. CruisePak to Quickbooks Interface Setup CruisePak can integrate directly with Quickbooks. In order to do that however, one must tell CruisePak how to behave when talking to Quickbooks. The Quickbooks Interface Setup is the means by which this is done. When one configures the interface, sending financial information from CruisePak to Quickbooks is easy as a click of the mouse. CruisePak Connector The CruisePak Connector is the means by which you connect your CruisePak information system to the internet. It is an application that just seems to sit there when you run it. But in reality, it is the ultimate key to an agency's successful internet strategy With CruisePak, the data is stored locally, on a computer, in your office, away from the prying eyes of the internet. Because the data (names, addresses, credit card numbers, passport info, etc.) is stored on your local computer, it avoids the legal issues associated when data is stored on the internet. Local storage of the data guards against identity theft, privacy rights violations (both State And Federal), and ensures that only you has control of the data. However, if you ever want to provide online Customer Relationship Management via the internet, you need to have your data, in some limited form, be accessible by general internet users....and so comes the CruisePak Connector. The Connector provides a very secure means by which you can connect your websites with your CruisePak data. Through usage of the Connector Application Programming Interface (API), you, or your web developers, can provide controlled access to your data through internet web pages and more. This is the most secure means of allowing customers online access to your data.....and hopefully, protects you from the myriad of lawsuits surrounding identity theft and privacy rights violations that are prevalent in today's business environment. CruisePak Workstation Configuration Utility The Workstation Configuration Utility is a simple utility that instructs CruisePak which databases to use. CruisePak is very flexible in that it can use a wide variety of Database Engines such as Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL, etc. In addition, CruisePak can use different database versions (ie, you might want to keep your South American customers in one and your US customers in another, etc.). The workstation utility allows you to quickly switch back and forth. CruisePak Database Utility This utility helps maintain the database that comes as part of CruisePak. For smaller agencies, the free database engine that comes with CruisePak is fine....and you use this utility to maintain it. For larger agencies (25 million plus), this utility is not used as the equivalent features are found in the Relational Database Management System in use. CruisePak Designer The CruisePak Designer is used to customize your Invoices, Quotes, Quote Requests, Confirmation Prints, Non Travel Invoice, and various reports. For Invoices, Quotes, and Quote Requests, output formats such as Print, HTML Email, Text Email, PDF are all customizable in order to give the agency the uniqueness it requires. The CruisePak Designer is the tool by which to do the desired customization. Integrated With Microsoft Office (Not Supplied, But Recommended) CruisePak is integrated with Microsoft Office products such as Word, Outlook, and Excel. Outlook is used for email integration, Word is used for form letter integration, and Excel is used for outputting of report data. The successful CruisePak user should also have Microsoft Office as part of their business arsenal. Integrated With Quickbooks (And Travcom) CruisePak has it's own internal accounting system. A full general ledger that can run in accrual or cash based modes. However, not many accountants (heck practically none) are familiar with CruisePak accounting. And thus, we provide the capability to integrate CruisePak with various accounting systems. If you have an accounting system other than the two mentioned above (Great Plains, Microsoft Small Business Accounting), we can integrate that too. It turns out as well that customization is necessary for all accounting integrations so give us a call and we'll get to the best solution. *Side Note. TRAMS integration will never be available as TRAMS is owned by Sabre who in turn owns Clientbase/TRAMS and thus is a competitor. In Conclusion Of course the above applications aren't perfect. However, it is believed that we have begun to put the fundamentals in place to allow the agency to regain the competitive edge. It is a tough battle with all that money going into online development of direct sales thereby bypassing the agency, but it is hoped that this application will reposition the agency to the most cost-effective means by which a supplier can sell their products which in turn, will lead to a better supplier/agency relationship.
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