Moreton Island is one of the best hol­i­day lo­ca­tions in Australia.

MIA ap­proached WorkingMouse to digi­tise their ferry book­ing sys­tem.

We may be a lit­tle bi­ased, but the dunes, pic­turesque beaches and wildlife make for an un­for­get­table hol­i­day.

MIA ap­proached WorkingMouse to digi­tise their ferry book­ing sys­tem.

MIA’s busi­ness op­er­a­tions, es­pe­cially those re­lat­ing to the MICAT (the ferry ser­vice), were be­ing man­aged us­ing out­dated and out­grown tech­nolo­gies im­pact­ing MIA’s abil­ity to op­er­ate efficiently.

The pro­ject cen­tered on im­prov­ing the efficiency and user ex­pe­ri­ence of the book­ing process through a web ap­pli­ca­tion.

“At the core of the pro­ject, we wanted to cre­ate a prod­uct that would en­cour­age self-ser­vice rather than the old man­ual process of pick­ing up the phone and call­ing the MIA staff.” Said MIA CEO, Liz Hemmens.

Part of the com­plex­i­ties of the pro­ject was the de­vel­op­ment of dy­namic pric­ing.

Depending on the prox­im­ity to a ferry trip and the num­ber of spaces re­main­ing, the price can fluc­tu­ate within a defined thresh­old.

Payments are processed through an in­te­gra­tion with the eWay pay­ment gate­way.

The other side of the so­lu­tion is used in­ter­nally within MIA.

MIA dock staff can view the fer­ry’s man­i­fest and check-in guests, stream­lin­ing their check-in process to a sin­gle staff mem­ber.

The book­ing so­lu­tion that emerged af­ter the scope was a mo­bile re­spon­sive web ap­pli­ca­tion.

Users can find the App through the mar­ket­ing site and de­cide whether to book a ferry, ac­com­mo­da­tion or sign up/​lo­gin.

The user ex­pe­ri­ence had to be sim­ple and easy to fol­low, so large but­tons high­light the di­rec­tion of the ferry and whether it is a ve­hi­cle/ pas­sen­ger book­ing.

One of the biggest sur­prises was the value that the gift card fea­ture pro­vided.

Many busi­nesses were im­pacted se­verely by COVID19 but none more so than the tourism in­dus­try.

Planned trips to Moreton Island were no longer pos­si­ble, lead­ing to can­cel­la­tions and re­quested re­funds over $700K.

For an SME, los­ing this amount of rev­enue can be fa­tal to the busi­ness.

Using the gift card fea­ture built into the ap­pli­ca­tion, MIA pro­vided gift cards rather than re­fund­ing can­celled trips, giv­ing them ac­cess to the cash flow they needed to sur­vive COVID.

Are you los­ing money hand over fist with man­ual processes?

Or maybe you’re try­ing to fit your busi­ness process into a sys­tem you can’t con­trol?

You’re likely in the same po­si­tion as thou­sands of Australian busi­nesses. You know you need a sys­tem that will work for you but don’t know where to start.

We get it. You can’t de­ter­mine what your ROI may be with­out first know­ing the cost of in­vest­ment, right?

To help, we’ve col­lated all the in­for­ma­tion you need to know about soft­ware pric­ing with ac­tual pro­ject data so you can de­ter­mine a prospec­tive ROI.

After all, you just want to know how much it costs to build an Application.

We think that’s pretty rea­son­able.

Go ahead and check this out now.