MakeMyTrip.com uses HP SMES to fulfill its rising needs

Staying ahead of competition and ensuring a satisfactory user experience has always been the core focus for travel websites and this time, MakeMyTrip.com uses HP SMES to fulfill its rising needs

After posting an impressive increase in its y-o-y revenue in Q3, FY13 by 24.5% at $63.8 mn, MakeMyTrip.com (MMT), one of India's premium travel booking websites, decided to improve on its existing IT framework and decided to go for enhancing a better user experience compared to competition.

MMT provides booking access for domestic and international airlines, Indian Railways, major bus operators and more than 10,300 hotels and guesthouses across the country. With the proliferation of internet and data services in emerging markets throughout India, MMT has experienced significant growth. The gross bookings, as per the Q3, FY13 results for hotels and packages increased by 67.2% YoY and for air ticketing, the increase was 38.4% YoY. Further, according to the company, transactions for hotels and packages improved by 68.2% YoY in 3Q13 and for air ticketing grew by 15.5% YoY in 3Q13.

In December 2012 alone, the company's website received 8.5 mn monthly unique visitors. In order to meet the growing needs of these visitors, it needed to improve processes for application development and testing for simpler and faster online transactions.

After a careful analysis of its needs and the urge to stay ahead of competition, MMT selected HP software to enhance its capabilities with HP Service Manager Enterprise Suite to standardize and automate management of key IT processes for faster application delivery. The HP solution helps MMT design and implement new products that simplify the online travel and booking process for its customers.

HP Service Manager Enterprise Suite (SMES) is a comprehensive, fully integrated IT service desk solution that draws on more than 25 years of service management focus and experience. It provides a powerful platform to standardize, automate, and enforce key IT processes and demonstrate value to the business. It offers efficiencies through integration and automation of core IT processes such as incident, problem, service level, and end-to-end change and configuration management as well as service request management, service catalogue, knowledge management and support self-service capabilities to save cost and meet business and user expectations. The HP SMES uses Out-of-the-box IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) v3-based process workflows for secure, efficient service operations and delivery

According to HP, the suite orchestrates ITSM processes and allows the client to track calls, requests, incidents, problems, changes, releases, configurations, and service-level agreements. So, for every task, the user has full knowledge of who is responsible, what has been done and still needs to be done, and whether the task is being completed quickly enough; the results implied being low costs, high user satisfaction, less risk, and better compliance with IT policies.

HP SMES also includes a license for 1000 catalogue and knowledge end-users per named user license and 2000 catalogue and knowledge users per floating license. "To stay ahead of competition, online businesses need to accelerate product development cycles and deliver solutions that provide a compelling end-user experience," said Sanket Atal, chief technology officer, MMT. "With HP Software, we have optimized IT processes to reduce development times of new online applications. This allows us to quickly deliver an enriched experience for visitors to our site", he added. The HP Service Manager Enterprise Suite enables MMT's application development teams to respond efficiently to requests for changes to the online travel application.

The HP solution also helps the IT team to monitor application changes in real-time. The improved efficiency and monitoring has helped reduce application downtime by 70percent. This enables MMT to meet its business goals and end user travel booking needs.