Channel Manager Becomes More Data Driven With Analytics

About NextPax

NextPax is an international channel manager in the travel industry with a distribution network to different channels like booking.com, AirBnb and HomeAway. As channel manager, they help all kinds of homeowners: connecting property managers and property management systems to various channels, allowing properties to be booked on different channels. The Channel manager software that NextPax has developed proves vital in this mission.

Enabling data driven decision making

As a channel manager, NextPax works with vast amounts of data. To make informed decisions, data needs to be at the center of the business. Having the right data allows NextPax to focus on the right opportunities, and help clients get the most out of their properties.

To do this, it is vital that:

• The business has a single source of truth (one consistent source for all their data)
• Actionable and user-friendly reports that give insights into the data at different levels
• A performant data pipeline that delivers accurate and timely updates

The approach

To solve this challenge, Max Filtenborg and Pim Hordijk started the project by doing a deep dive into the current data pipelines and models in place. Consequently, we designed a star-schema data model that would allow us to build out the reports in PowerBI. In this process we did several iterations on the reports and underlying data model, incorporating feedback from NextPax. This allowed us to design user-friendly reports that generate actionable insights for the business.

In the process of this project we had to tackle the following technical aspects:

• Ensure the data pipeline is performant
• Check the data for quality and consistency
• Build a star-schema data model that scales well for analytics and is suitable for our reporting needs
• Iterate on the reports to provide a nice user experience
• Add and merge missing dimensions in the data by joining several data sources and performing calculations in the ETL pipeline

The outcome

With the new data pipeline and reports, NextPax can steer the business based on daily up-to-date data. Before the solution was even fully finished it was already heavily in use to gain further insights into the business and make informed decisions using the latest data.