News

Flight Centre – Direct Delivery FCM, CTM, Stage & Screen and Campus Travel

August 2011

Spurwing is pleased to announce a new development to improve the lodgement process of invoices for the Flight Centre Corporate brands, this service is now available for all Spurwing users. The ‘direct delivery’ method has been developed with the support of Flight Centre Corporate will ensure that invoices for Flight Centre Corporate brands (FCM Travel, Corporate Travel Management (CTM), Stage & Screen and Campus Travel will be delivered directly to the correct team of consultants for processing and payment.

Over 5,000 Trading Partners Mapped into Spurwing

July 2011

Thanks to the efforts of many, we now have over 5,000 trading partners in Spurwing, this includes hundreds of travel distributors as well as hundreds of corporate accounts invoiced by travel suppliers on a regular basis, all of whom can now receive electronic invoices via Spurwing.

Proven Savings Range $15,000 to $25,000

June 2011

Case studies undertaken by a range of hotels from the Intercontinental, Parkroyal and Rydges Hotels suggest a savings range between $15,000 and $25,000 per hotel per annum when replacing paper invoicing processes with the Spurwing electronic solution.

IHG Group Adoption Includes PNG, French Polynesia & NZ

June 2011

The Spurwing implementation program for the Intercontinental Hotel Group IHG is now well progressed, with the focus now moving towards the IHG hotels in French Polynesia, PNG and New Zealand.

Intouch Data Provides Opportunity for Range of Hotels

May 2011

Intouch Data, industry leaders in hospitality data solutions has partnered with Spurwing to develop an automated invoice loading solution for the Opera Property Management System (PMS). Spurwing now interfaces with Opera file extracts from both Micros and Intouch Data. Hotels using Opera can now send all invoices in less than 5 minutes per day.

Rydges Hotels & Resorts Adopt Spurwing

March 2011

One of Australia’s most progressive hotel companies, Rydges Hotels & Resorts, is the latest hotel chain to adopt Spurwing as its electronic invoicing solution. This decision comes after a period of assessment during which participating hotels experienced a significant reduction in the time taken to process invoices by replacing the existing paper invoicing process with Spurwings electronic invoicing solution.

Micros Releases Opera File Extract – version 2

February 2011

Micros, have recently released an upgraded version of the Opera File Extract used by Hotels using the Opera PMS to extract invoices electronically for loading into Spurwing. Tow important extension on the first extract include; - the ability to extract ALL invoices (travel and non-travel) from within Opera, this allows Hotels to extract and send ALL invoices electronically within minutes; - the ability to extract more detailed invoice data, including line items which will assist all users

InterContinental Hotel Group Adopts Spurwing

October 2010

The world’s largest hotel company, IHG (InterContinental Hotels Group), has moved to adopt Spurwing as its electronic invoicing solution. The progressive hotel chain will undertake a staged approach to the roll-out of Spurwing across all Australian states, plus French Polynesia and Papua New Guinea.

ATM & APTC Join Spurwing

August 2010

Australian Tours Management (ATM), a progressive inbound and destination management company catering for travellers from the Asia Pacific region, and All Pacific Travel Concept (APTC) a long term industry leader and inbound travel specialist catering to the European and American markets are the most recent distributors to commence processing supplier invoices via Spurwing.

Wotif & Qantas Automated Spreadsheets Now Available

July 2010

Spurwing now has the ability to ‘gather up’ invoices loaded for volume distributors Wotif and Qantas Holidays and deliver them in the specific format requested by these distributors. This automated feature replaces the time consuming process of manually generating these spreadsheets. Spurwing will develop new formats for volume players are requested by the market.

Choice Hotels Adopts Spurwing Solution

May 2010

The Choice Hotel Group, one of Australia’s leading Hotel Chains has recently announced its intention to adopt Spurwing as its preferred method of sending electronic invoices to travel distributors on behalf of the organisations 270 plus accommodation businesses.

Micros Opera PMS File Extract Released

March 2010

The file extract has been developed by Micros and successfully deployed within a number of leading hotels. The file extract enables hotels using the Opera Property Management System (version 4 & 5) to extract invoices from Opera for loading into Spurwing for matching against distributor voucher information, removing time consuming & error prone manual data transfer.

Invoice Distribution Manager Released

February 2010

The invoice distribution manager has been developed in response to requests from suppliers who wish to send all invoices electronically in a single process. Tourism suppliers can now send All invoices for All agents / travel distributors in a single process.

Spotlight on Spurwing at ATEC Meeting Place

December 2008

The Australian Tourism Export Council (ATEC) recently requested an overview of the Spurwing solution to be presented at ATEC’s Inbound Tour Operator Forum which forms part of ‘Meeting Place’, ATEC’s end of year gathering of its members.

The forum was attended by 40 plus inbound tour operators interested to know more about the Spurwing solution. Given the recent drop off in inbound numbers on the back of the global financial crisis, inbound tour operators (like everyone else) are searching for opportunities to reduce costs, hence the interest in the Spurwing presentation.

CATO Introduced to Spurwing

December 2008

Members of the Council of Australian Tour Operators (CATO), recently invited Julian Knight, General Manager of Synyati to provide a brief overview of the Spurwing solution at CATO’s end of year members meeting. The meeting, chaired by General Manager Peter Bailey, and attended by 60 plus CATO members were interested in how Spurwing could provide electronic invoice and payment processes to reduce costs associated with the management of their international travel suppliers.

Hotels See Spurwing Value

November 2008

Several leading hotel chains met recently to assess the Spurwing electronic voucher matching process. The Hotels expressed strong interest in the solution, agreeing that the concept of electronic invoicing aligns with their internal strategies to employ technology to improve business processes and reduce costs. Of the range of Spurwing benefits discussed during the meeting, strong interest was displayed in the ability of hotels to transparently track the path of the invoice approvals process and act to resolve discrepancies quickly.

MYOB Connectivity Completed

October 2008

Spurwing can now accept a MYOB standard spreadsheet report containing invoice details as data input for suppliers. Suppliers using MYOB for their accounts will have no integration issues in using Spurwing.

Spurwing refined to accommodate group bookings

1st October 2008

Synyati is pleased to announce the release of the latest version of Spurwing, the web based voucher matching software which features additional functionality to manage the more complex group travel booking data.

Synyati Business Development Manager, Carmel Fox has worked closely with inbound tour operators which manage large group movement to better understand the nuances and complexities of the group booking process and has responded with a number of refinements to Spurwing.

As a result, complex group booking and subsequent group related invoices can now be managed and resolved on screen.

Working group leads charge for Tourplan integration

16th September 2008

Inbound Tour Operator members of the Working Group guiding the development of Spurwing, the voucher matching solution have collectively approached Tourplan requesting an interface to download matched results from Spurwing back into Tourplan ready for payment.

Jim Devine, Financial Controller at ATS Pacific has been a driving force in recognising the efficiencies which could be delivered via this process, labelling it the holy grail, being able to upload data, have it matched in Spurwing and then download a report back into Tourplan effectively completes the roundtrip with the data untouched and without a paper invoice in sight.

Tourplan have been supportive in their response, indicating a solution could be developed and ready for use by participating Tourplan ITO’s within 8-10 weeks.

ATEC supports development of industry standard

10th September 2008

Gary O’Riordan, General Manager of the Australian Tourism Export Council (ATEC) recently congratulated Synyati on its vision for the tourism industry in the creation of Spurwing, the web based voucher matching solution.

Mr O’Riordan commented on the need to assist industry is striving for cost effective business efficiencies, highlighting that the process of manually processing invoices for traditional distributors is an inefficient and costly process. With the introduction of Spurwing, we have an opportunity to improve business processes and reduce costs, the initiative is therefore welcomed by the industry.

The potential to create an industry standard for the communication of payment and invoice data between distributors and suppliers within the industry is a very worthwhile objective stated Mr O’Riordan

The reduction in the amount of paper invoices moving around the industry will also deliver a very significant environmental benefit, an outcome which is applauded and supported by ATEC according to Mr O’Riordan.

Inaugural matching trial completed

11th August 2008

Synyati Managing Director Julian Knight today released the results of the Inaugural data matching test program in which booking data from participating inbound tour operators was uploaded and matched electronically against invoice data uploaded by participating tourism suppliers.

Mr Knight thanked the participants for their involvement which delivered results involving percentages of matched items at higher levels than had been anticipated.

The percentage of matches achieved by individual participants ranged from 86% thru to 96% of data supplied. This effectively reduced the manual matching and processing costs incurred by Inbound Tour Operators and gave results in seconds.

Mr Knight indicated that he was extremely pleased with the initial results, highlighting that the high percentage of matches were achieved mostly for fully independent traveller (FIT) type bookings. The focus over the next month is to refine the matching solution by building in more flexibility which will facilitate on screen manual matching of more complex group invoices.

Industry working group established

27th June 2008

Synyati are pleased to announce the formation of an Industry Working Group to guide the development and implementation of the voucher matching project.

The Working Group includes representatives from leading Inbound Tour Operators including ATS Pacific, Pan Pacific Travel, JTB, Goway Travel and Pacific Spirit.

Synyati Managing Director, Julian Knight thanks the members of the industry working group for their support, highlighting that the objective of the Working Group is to participate in a pilot program in which the voucher matching solution is fully tested by matching booking data against the invoice data of suppliers, and to provide feedback to refine the solution.