Salesforce Integration & Automation
How ScaleCapacity Helped Luminary Travel Simplify Data Management
Luminary Travel is a luxury travel agency based in New York City that pairs renowned thinkers and influencers with small groups of travelers for bespoke, intimate “Luminary Experiences” around the world.
For Luminary agents, planning and managing customer itineraries—down to the finest details of each tailored trip—is an essential job function. However, over time, Luminary’s process of recording, tracking, and updating reservation data had become both time-consuming and prone to error. The team spent 15-20 hours per week manually entering the same data into two siloed platforms, AXUS and Salesforce, and could not ensure real-time accuracy. “Providing customers with quick updates had become more difficult, and the leadership team lacked a clear picture of the sales pipeline,” says Kishan Patel, cloud engineer at ScaleCapacity.
"Luminary needed a way to integrate its data across two platforms—AXUS and Salesforce—for the sake of improved efficiency, friction-free customer experiences, and informed decision-making."
Luminary needed a better way to manage and report its data across two platforms, for the sake of improved efficiency, friction-free customer experiences, and informed decision making. The company engaged ScaleCapacity to integrate AXUS, its “source of truth” platform where data is first inputted, with Salesforce, and to automate regular data syncs.
ScaleCapacity Looks To Solve Three Primary Challenges
Via a detailed discovery process, the ScaleCapacity team learned how Luminary agents were using AXUS and Salesforce day-to-day to track and leverage reservation data. ScaleCapacity uncovered three business problems they hoped to solve:
The agents’ data management workflow had become a huge operational burden.
Agents were duplicating their efforts between two siloed platforms. First, they would manually input itinerary data into AXUS, a platform for creating proposals and sharing itinerary details with travelers. Then, in order to manage customer interactions and monitor sales, they needed to reenter or update those same records inside of Salesforce. These manual updates could affect any number of details within a reservation, which often included multiple individuals and travel details grouped in a single record.
“Imagine one itinerary with 20 reservations,” Patel says. “For each activity per reservation—a new city, hotel, or flight—agents had to stop what they were doing and manually reenter the additions or changes in Salesforce.”
Duplicate data entry was error-prone and didn’t afford real-time views.
Given the time lapses between updates and the propensity for manual errors, agents could not be sure the information they were giving travelers was up-to-date, and the Luminary leadership team lacked the holistic view or reporting capabilities they needed to optimize decision-making.
“When multiple agents were working, and the leadership team wanted to look at the data, agents would have to stop what they were doing so the data could be entered into Salesforce,” Patel says. “In fact, Luminary had one or two people dedicated to this task.”
Without a dedicated IT team, Luminary needed a simple solution.
ScaleCapacity saw that having a single admin and no dedicated IT team meant Luminary would have limited capacity and expertise to devote to ongoing system maintenance. This was an important business challenge that would factor into ScaleCapacity’s design of the new data management system.
“As a smaller company, Luminary just wanted to get things done right—and quickly,” Patel says. “They didn’t
want the fanciness or complexity of a heavy enterprise solution. Building a system that requires minimal upkeep was a top priority for us.”
Seamless Automation With Built-in Business Rules
After identifying Luminary’s business challenges, the ScaleCapacity team leveraged their Salesforce expertise to propose the simplest, most mature solution possible—one that was tested and proven. The proposal came with several options for data syncing, from which Luminary chose two:
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Data would automatically sync between AXUS and Salesforce in nightly batches.
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Agents would also have the ability to sync data immediately at any time with the click of a button.
A unique “key identifier” would limit each sync to adding updates or new entries, preventing the need to overwrite or replace the entire dataset. And a timestamp would accompany each sync, along with user validation to prevent incomplete or incorrect data (e.g., duplicate entries) from being entered.
ScaleCapacity also created post-business logic that would perform a specific action after the data was synced. For example, when updated or newly added data meets certain criteria, it now automatically moves to a certain sales stage—without the need for human intervention.
Finally, ScaleCapacity mapped the flow between AXUS and Salesforce to ensure minimal business disruption while the solution was being built.
Training and Post-Production Support
As a smaller company with only one person available to handle administrative issues, Luminary needed to keep the new Salesforce setup operational after the project was completed. As ScaleCapacity built the solution, they taught the Luminary team how the technology worked and how to operate it—so the company’s dedicated admin understood how to troubleshoot and temporarily stop the data sync if needed.
ScaleCapacity also provided detailed step-by-step user guides and remained on call to answer user questions as the solution became operational. Since successfully concluding the project—with the new Salesforce setup in a sustainable mode and needing minimal maintenance—the team has been available for ongoing help as needed, thanks to an added managed service option.
"With 15-20 hours per week of manual entry eliminated, agents have been freed to spend far more time on high-value tasks such as engaging customers and driving sales."
Transformative Business Benefits
Luminary’s new data management system has revolutionized the company’s travel operations. Through the process of planning, building, and supporting a customized Salesforce integration and automation, ScaleCapacity also helped Luminary unleash significant value for both the business and the travelers it serves—and further cement its position as a travel industry leader. The benefits include:
Operational Efficiency
With 15-20 hours per week of manual entry eliminated, and itineraries and traveler information flowing automatically and seamlessly from AXUS to Salesforce, agents have been freed to spend far more time on high-value tasks such as engaging customers and driving sales.
Real-Time Insights
The Luminary leadership team can now access real-time data and insights within Salesforce and take advantage of advanced reporting capabilities. This has enabled quick decision-making and improved customer service.
Outstanding Customer Experience
When travelers need timely information, agents can be confident the data they’re sharing is accurate and complete, updated nightly by default or by the click of a button—with built-in business logic executing appropriate steps in Salesforce.
Building and customizing solutions to solve business problems is part of ScaleCapacity’s standard process. “At first, we put our technical minds aside to understand the complete business problem from the client’s perspective,” Patel says. “Then we determine how to leverage technology to best assist them.”
By leveraging its Salesforce expertise to align technology with Luminary’s business needs, ScaleCapacity set a new standard for streamlined processes and real-time data accessibility within the Salesforce ecosystem.