Item Vendor Comms

Introduction

Dolphin Dynamics customers who obtain contracted rates from their suppliers, can load them in the Booking Management Module (BMM) using the product database (product DB) functionality and book the loaded rates in the Reservation Module (RM). This process allows them to use the vendor comms functionality (from now on referred to as "contract vendor comms") to pass the booking information to suppliers.

However, often, consultants quote rates from paper contracts, or call their suppliers to negotiate a better rate or the extension of an expired offer directly with the supplier over the phone.

Until now, the process of confirming or re-confirming the non-product DB booking details with the supplier via email has been completely manual and time-consuming. Users needed to manually type the booking details into an email for the supplier, which could lead to typos, inconsistency and delays.  Plus, there would be no audit trail in the BMM.

This is why the vendor comms module has been extended to apply to non-product DB items for products loaded in the Hotel, Car hire and Other tabs.

The new Item Vendor Comms module is independent from the contract vendor comms so Dolphin customers can decide to adopt both or only one of them.

Once item vendor comms is enabled for your company, all the settings related to this module will become available for you to configure as required.

Vendor Profiles

Item vendor comms is enabled on a vendor per vendor basis by selecting the new Allow Vendor Comms For Non-Product DB Items setting in the General 1 tab of vendor profiles that act as financial vendors for non-product DB items:

The other settings available within vendor profiles allow you to customise the vendor comms emails layout per vendor. 

Travel Folders

Once the new Allow Vendor Comms For Non-Product DB Items setting is selected in the General 1 tab of a hotel, car hire or other item financial vendor, a new Vendor Comms button will display:

To generate a print request for a vendor comms email, a product booking must be created. To create an item product booking (which is a product booking for a non-product DB item), BMM users need to click on the Vendor Comms button and then select the OK button:

Once the print request is generated, the Vendor Comms button shows a green dot as per below example:

BMM users can also check for what folder items a vendor comms print request has been generated by selecting the Folder Preview menu option and checking the new Product Booking column:

The above example shows an X for the transfer and the hotel but not for the tour or the flights.

Product DB Contracts

For Dolphin customers loading their negotiated rates within product DB and wanting to use both contract and item vendor comms, they can configure the relevant settings within the financial vendor profile and then select the new Use Vendor Defaults setting within the contract Settings tab:

Product Booking search

The Product Booking search, available from Search > Product DB > Product Bookings, has been enhanced to cater for item product bookings as well as contract product bookings (product bookings for product DB items):

• The new Type dropdown allows users to search only for item product bookings or contracts product bookings or both.
• The new Is Item Product Booking column indicates whether the record is an item product booking or not.

Vendor Comms Templates

Vendor comms print requests are actioned by the Bulk Vendor Comms engine via the bulk vendor comms templates configured from Bulk Operations > Vendor Operations > Vendor Comms > Add Bulk Vendor Comms Template:

A third option labelled Per Folder is now available from the new Vendor Comms dropdown:

• If the Vendor Comms dropdown is set to Per Booking, the BMM will send one vendor comms email per product DB booking per folder (existing functionality).
• If the Vendor Comms dropdown is set to Per Vendor, the BMM will send one vendor comms email per vendor with a list of bookings across multiple folders (existing functionality).
• If the Vendor Comms dropdown is set to Per Folder, the BMM will send one vendor comms email per vendor per folder (new functionality).

The only vendor comms view that can be used to configure vendor comms templates for non-product DB items is the DBA.QTBookingsandFoldItems_VW. For more information on the where clauses included in this view, see here.  

Just like contract vendor comms, item vendor comms print requests can be executed ad-hoc manually or in bulk every X number of minutes or on set days and times.

Folder Print History 

The folder Print History tab has been enhanced to display all the actions related to contract and item vendor comms emails. This way, each time a vendor comms email is sent from the BMM, a record is stored in the folder:

Most importantly, the print history record also shows the body of the vendor comms email:

This means that if the email includes the booking details, these will be displayed in the print history record as well.

Document Archiving

The document archiving functionality has also been enhanced to archive both contract and item vendor comms emails.

If you wish to know more about this new module, email our support team at support@dolphind.com.