Case Study of the Implementation of the Ungerboeck Software System

1. Lessons Learned &
Innovations Made
HORNBLOWER CASE STUDY IN
USI IMPLEMENTATION AND CUSTOMIZATIONS
USI User Group Conference
Larisa Thomas
September 2012
Director of Reservations
USI Implementation Project Manager

2. Who We Are…
• Larisa Thomas, Director of Reservations
• Hornblower Cruises & Events, premier dining yacht company
in eight cities in California & New York
• 42 vessels and one
historic church
property known as
The Abbey
• Parent company to
Alcatraz Cruises,
Statue Cruises and
the newly awarded
concession at Niagara
Falls, Canada

3. What We Use USI For:
• USI supports the Hornblower side of
the business
• Custom private yacht charters of 202000 people
• From charter ferry services to gala events
• Public Cruises for individual bookings
and large groups
• 300 Users with a concurrent 100 user
license in the hosted environment
• Looking to expand to 400 users by year
end
• The User Group includes Sales,
Accounting, Food & Beverage, Captains,
IT, Marketing, Call Center, Ticket Booth,
Human Resources

4. What We Will Cover Today….
Overview of implementation
methods
Overview of customizations to work
with the nature of our business
Overview of improved operating
procedures
Overview of post-implementation
adoption efforts

5. Before USI
• 25+ Year old legacy system, affectionately known as CTERM
• So old it was new again!
• A lot of manual processes, particularly in Accounting
• Lack of reporting – hard to pull data out of the system because of
the data structure
• Reliant on a single
programmer
• Heavily customized to
our business model
• Robust and did a lot of
what we asked of it
• Difficult to upgrade to
work with modern
technologies

6. The Transition Team
• Created a Steering
Committee with members
from all operational areas
affected by the conversion
• Held weekly internal
meetings to recap project
progress and divide up the
work
• The extended team had
approximately 30
individuals who all played
a part in the configuration
and conversion
General
Management
Charter/
Group Sales
Call Center
Human
Resources
Accounting
Implementation
Team
Marine
Operations
IT
Food &
Beverage
Webmaster
Marketing

7. Data Conversion – The Good
• Sent our data our to be
“cleaned”
• Appended customer records
with public information
• Individuals – with Census Data
• Companies – with Corporate
Data and NAIS coding
• The additional data allows us
to slice and dice customer
data in new and interesting
ways to create targeted
marketing campaigns and spot
buying trends among similar
client types

8. Organizational Information

9. NAIS Codes –
Products/
Services
• NAIS information –
Using Products/Services

10. Individual Information

11. Data Conversion – The Bad,
and the Ugly
• Would never convert that much data again!
• Brought over a complex arrangement of
customer data, going back far too many years,
especially since the legacy system is still available
• Brought over historic event information in
addition to the contact information
• Became a HUGE time suck
• RECOMMENDATION: Keep It Simple!
• Bring over only what you really absolutely need
to – not what you think you would like to have
• Probably really only need 1-3 years of customer
information, depending on your industry
• Do not bring over historic event information
• Create history books or some other archive that is
easy for your team to access if they do need to get
to the old data

12. System Configuration
• Resource Master/Price Lists – major
stumbling block
• Over 2700 items in 117 categories
• 1230 packages
• Hard to keep organized – had to renumber
many, many times
• Discovered we were missing many items at
GoLive. Almost 50% of post-implementation
complaints had to do with missing
resource/price list items.
• RECOMMENDATION: Start your Price List
review early
• Run metrics on what is being ordered
• “If you haven’t worn it in 30 days, toss it” –
applies here. If you aren’t selling very many of
something, don’t bring it over. It’s just clutter!
• Start with a well thought out and consistent
number programming, with built in gaps for
adding more products later

13. System
Configuration
The Bug List
• Created a Google Form for Users to
submit issues they found in the
system at Go Live
• 679 submissions from Feb. 23 to
Aug. 8
• In late July, began to transition to
traditional Help Desk/Support

14. Customizations, Customizations,
Customizations
• We had approximately a dozen customizations:
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Exact Target Interface
Web Services Delivery
Email Confirmations
Contract Templates
Resource Note Copying
Voucher Import
Voucher Processing
Registration Pricing Update
Promo Code Copying/Updating
And still in progress…
• Event Report Web Interface
• Event Update Tool

15. Training
• Two Power User Trainings – Brought
everyone to our Headquarters
• Started End User training with a road
trip – traveling with power users, and
USI Consultant, to each of the cities
we operate in
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Started in San Diego on Monday
Hit up Long Beach on Wednesday
Finished in San Francisco on Friday
1.5 days in each city training the
Sales teams
• Conducted targeted trainings with
Food & Beverage, Operations,
Accounting, Call Center

16. Training
• After GoLive, launched weekly webinar topics
• Recorded and posted recordings of webinars

17. Training
• Customized training manuals

18. Naming the New System
• Contest winner received a $100 gift card
• Received 167 submissions from 57 different users in 17
departments
• One User submitted 63 different submissions, including by the
end of the contest for: “Ungerboeck”
• A lot of submissions with commentary, or some combination of
the names of the new and old system