City of Westminster
Westminster City Council required an online booking facility to allow for the booking and payment of food safety courses. Biznet IIS were commissioned to design and develop a set of web based forms that would allow the public and food operators within Westminster City Council to search/enquire course content and to reserve and make online payments for their food safety courses.
Goals and Challenges
Westminster City Council required an online booking facility to allow for the booking and payment of food safety courses. Biznet IIS were commissioned to design and develop a set of web based forms that would allow the public and food operators within Westminster City Council to search/enquire course content and to reserve and make online payments for their food safety courses.
The biggest challenge for this project was to deliver a user friendly and attractive user reference point for all food safety courses for Westminster City Council. It was essential that the website integrated with the existing payments processes and engine in operation with CAPITA Ltd. It was also crucial that biznet adhered to quality standards and technological standards developed in house and with any other external supplier as outlined by Westminster.
Solutions
A custom courses database and content management facility enables administrative users to create courses, add all appropriate information including title, synopsis, description, images, location, available dates, number of places, cost of course and other information such as pre-requisites. All this information is stored within the Kentico CMS and displayed using the event calendar module. A database of people and companies that have attended courses, reports of the courses booked and paid for is also available to the food courses staff with the Kentico CMS admin area using the BizForms module.
Through some customisation of the Kentico ecommerce module, biznet IIS have provided the City of Westminster administrative staff with the ability to generate receipts and invoices using information captured during the booking process and through the integration with the Capita payment engine.
Within the website, potential course attendees are able to integrate the event calendar and ecommerce booking modules to:
• View courses and content;
• Check course availability on-line (real time);
• Reserve a single place on a course;
• Reserve multiple places on a course;
• Calculate course costs;
• Make a credit or debit card on-line payment for courses reserved;
All of the above functionality was completed within 6 weeks and deployed to a live sub domain within the City of Westminster Council website.
Results
Prior to this website being created, all enquiries, bookings and payments for food safety courses were processed manually using telephone and mail. Course confirmation was not received by the attendee until all cheques were processed and funds received into Westminster City Council. The implementation of the online booking course enquiries and booking facility achieves greater efficiencies internally for Westminster City Council, and reduces costs of processing and administering the food safety courses. Another added benefit is that the communication process to the public has been strengthened now that users can browse and book online, reducing the amount of phone and email queries to the council.
Key criteria for selecting Kentico CMS
Kentico CMS was chosen as it offered the required event calendar and ecommerce modules which were needed to achieve this project. Following an open and competitive tender process the Kentico CMS solution appealed to Westminster City Council as it offered a robust system which could be deployed by a Gold Partner who has previous experience.
View the Website