Remote construction project selects Gemstone to manage travel and accommodations

Background

In 2015, a major Canadian oil company — one that operates hundreds of flights and houses thousands of workers each month — engaged Gemstone Logistics to deliver a complete, integrated solution for the management of their large-scale charter travel and accommodation logistics.

Having completed the recent purchase of Orissa Software Inc., Gemstone was able to devise an innovative solution, connecting its newly acquired CampWare — an accommodation management software already used across the oil company’s lodges—directly to its existing proprietary software.

This solution — CIRYS Travel & Rooms Management — deployed secure, decentralized flight and room reservation capabilities, real-time management reporting and intelligent, customizable business rules, offering full-circle capabilities to save the client significant time and money.

Challenge

This large remote FIFO construction project was looking for a solution to the disparate operations of their charter, lodging and reporting currently being used to manage the thousands of monthly workers.

The project owner understood they were opportunities for efficiencies but was unable to find and secure a solution.

Goals

• Eliminate room wastage within its lodges
• Hold contractors accountable for use of company assets
• Reduce reliance on third party sites and hotels
• Give senior leadership actionable insight
• Improve human resource inefficiencies

Outcome / Results

CIRYS’ synchronized platform and flexible functionality proved to be a significant asset — one that:

Increased asset efficiency

By mandating the booking of flights with matching lodge check-in/check-out dates, CIRYS formed a reciprocal relationship between flight dates and lodge stays for the first time. The results were unprecedented.

70% of flights are now booked with corresponding rooms (up from 0%). Considering that a 1% reduction in unoccupied rooms for an oil company of this size translates to $7 million in annual savings, this level of asset efficiency translates to considerable savings.

Enforced accountability

Timely reporting of late cancellations and ‘no-show’ passengers created an opportunity for the client to seek over $6 million (annually) in compensation directly from contractors. Because of this threat, instances of “no-shows” for flights and lodge stays have been reduced by 40%.

Reduced costs

CIRYS business rules require confirmed lodge reservations before flights are booked. The end-result? Significant cost avoidance and reliance on third party accommodations, which had previously been required for travellers who arrived at full lodges without reservations.

Enhanced insight

CIRYS provides senior leadership with immediate access to reports via a single interface. This eliminates time spent waiting for airline reports on passenger movement or lodge reports on room availability. Further, it provides full oversight of the whole travel and accommodation process, while also recording a point-of-reference for airline and camp operator billings.

Increased human resource efficiency

CIRYS converts complex, multi-step bookings on disparate systems into one intuitive process. For this client, that allowed their travel coordinator to make 809 flight reservations in a single day —an estimated increase in productivity of at least 50%. Even more, the decentralization of bookings allowed the camp operator to disband its dedicated reservations team, providing further cost efficiencies to the oil company.

Additional Benefits

Forecasting

The lodge operator uses CIRYS to forecast peak front desk activity, allowing full visibility of intra-day staffing needs.

Streamlined operations

CIRYS facilitated the introduction of new cost saving business producers such as automatic check-out, which expedites room turnover and penalizes contractors for any over-stays.

Software integration

CIRYS was customized to connect to the oil company’s ERP/Onboarding system, increasing efficiency of the oil company’s personnel onboarding process.

Visibility

The oil company’s finance team was able to close month-end quickly and easily with instant access to historic reporting.