At the time of writing, our Product and Engineering team consists of about 25 programmers who are continuously working to further develop Booking Experts. One of the most recently completed projects is the renewal of the statistics module. We spoke about this project with Robin Meijer and Stefan Henzen, respectively Operations Manager and Senior Software Engineer at Booking Experts.
When and why did you start developing this project?
Stefan: "The old statistics were calculated and run every night, regardless of whether anyone was looking at them. This worked fine before, but as we connected more and more clients, this file became huge and too heavy to function properly. We regularly saw that the programme was crashing and that statistics weren't coming through correctly. We received a lot of questions about this from users, so we needed to improvements. It soon became clear that we could solve this problem by calculating the statistics on demand. This had the added benefit of making the data available in real time. So this development didn't actually start as a development project, but rather as a quick fix. Gradually, however, I saw more opportunities for improvement and development, which made us want to tackle the entire statistics module thoroughly and start an official project.
'Because we grew as a company, our team was able to grow with it, and we now had the opportunity to take this on in a big way. This way our existing users also benefit directly from our growth.'
Once we decided to take on the statistics module and start a project, we brought the right people together to map out what the end result needed to be. We sat down with Gido (Data Analyst at Booking Boosters) and Carlo (Head of Revenue) and thoroughly reviewed feedback from our users to gain a better understanding of what users wanted. What data do you want to see as a marketer and what filtering capabilities do you need as a revenue manager?
The first reason for starting this project was to make the data real-time, which is also the biggest change in the backend. The statistics are now always up to date, at any time of day. In addition, a lot has changed in the statistics interface - various filter options have been added and the period selection has become a lot more dynamic than before.
'This project has been a great collaboration between the more experienced Booking Experts and new young recruits.'
Robin: 'That new period selection was actually already a long-awaited wish within our team. Because we have grown as a company, our team was able to grow with it and we now had the opportunity to take this on in a big way. In this way, our existing users also benefit directly from our growth - the developments we make are beneficial for all our users.
For our colleague Daniel, this was the first major project within Booking Experts in which he was involved. This project has been a great collaboration between the more experienced Booking Experts and our new young recruits. It was one of Carlo's first projects. During the initial phase he was involved as a consultant, and later became a permanent team member. With his knowledge of the industry and revenue management, he played an advisory role regarding industry-standard KPIs such as average daily rate, RevPAR, average rent/turnover per guest present and number of rented/unrented property nights.
Stefan: 'We are extremely happy with the result. Updating the statistics has brought several benefits, such as the ability to save reports, greater ease of use and, of course, real-time data. We will, of course, continue to develop and certainly have several more things in the pipeline.'
Do you have questions about our statistics module or specific requirements? Please contact our Customer Success Team!