Equinus Independent Reviews 2008/09 Travel Technology Guide
Equinus Independent Supplier Review
Vertical Group
www.verticalgroup.co.uk
In the early 1980’s, videotext (or viewdata as it was also known) was the dominant technology for U.K.
travel agents. The PC had just been invented, was expensive and had no travel software. Videotex
could book a holiday but the agent had to manually record the transaction, make a note of payments
and update the customer paper file. Not only was this labour intensive process it was error prone.
At that time, an Essex based agent was looking to automate its accounting and started discussing its
requirements with its local IT provider to see what could be done. Stewart Hall was the agent and
Peter Healey the IT guy and together they developed a Novell network solution to capture booking
data from the videotext screens and record the details on a local server. That was in 1983 and Tarsc
was born.
Twenty five years later, Vertical Group has grown to become one of the UK’s largest providers of travel
agent technology. With a wide portfolio of products, Vertical offers agents, large or small, a full set of
solutions that can either be implemented independently or as an enterprise suite.
The core product is still Tarsc, a Microsoft Windows based front and back office solution. Today Tarsc
is fully hosted for a variable monthly fee which can include PCs, printers and a managed ADSL
broadband connection. As one might expect from a product with 25 years of development, Tarsc is
functionally rich and meets all the requirements of a travel agency business, including its own,
integrated accounting system. Tarsc is suitable for single or multiple branch agents and home
workers. It can handle traditional and dynamically packaged holidays plus all other travel products and
foreign exchange. Consequently Tarsc is ideal for agents who sell their own tours and those with
corporate travel accounts.
To help agents quickly find holidays & flights, Magic Desktop is an ideal selling tool that can be used
on its own or integrated directly with Tarsc.
The Athena customer relationship management option brings Tarsc and Magic Desktop together into
a single customer view with additional functionality such as customer profiling and personalised
documentation. Athena also helps agents see the total value of individual customers and provide a
much higher service level.
For agents wanting a transactional website with online booking, Vertical’s ITS (Internet Travel
Services) white label delivers a full suite of search and book functionality. Bookings can be passed to
Tarsc and customers can manage their online and offline bookings and make payments via ITS.
To complement these products, Vertical can supply a full data communication package for inter-branch
links, internet access and Voice over IP. The VoIP service reduces the agent’s telephone bill by using
the broadband connection to make telephone calls. VoIP includes a full set of call functionality such as
conference calls, call divert and call routing.
Although Vertical is one of the longest established providers of travel technology for the small to
medium sized travel agents, its customers also include the Co-operative Travel Group, the UK’s
largest independent travel agency. The Co-operative Travel Group was formed following the merger of
Co-op Travel and Travelcare and Vertical was chosen to extend its technology to the whole group.
Barrhead Travel, Readers Offers, Club La Costa, Knock Travel, Oasis Travel, Airflights, Gill’s Cruise
Centre and Miss Ellies are other well known names that have chosen Vertical as their IT partner.
From its launch in 1983, Vertical employs over 60 people and delivers technology to over 10,000 travel
agents in the U.K., from single branch independent agent to multiple groups plus home workers and
online channels. Vertical rightly prides itself on its ability to meet the total requirement of today’s travel
agent, large or small with a cost-effective, fully hosted solution that leaves agents to concentrate on
selling and not worry about the technology.
As David Trunkfield, Vertical’s Implementation Manager says “Tarsc is a rock solid product that does
just what it should and that’s what our customers want”.
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