Golfers around the country may benefit from a natural language speech recognition (NLSR) booking system developed by VeCommerce and 303Sport.com.
Forty courses have already joined the project, which allows players to phone in and speak the name of the course, the number of players and the desired tee-off time.
If the time offered is satisfactory, the golfer reads out his or her credit card number and expiry date, and the transaction is processed through VeCommerce's real-time payment gateway, which is operated in association with SecurePay.
The system means bookings can be made at any time of day, callers are most unlikely to get a busy signal and they won't be put on hold; furthermore, course staff are freed up to provide better face-to-face service.
It is also capable of sending an SMS message confirming the booking, and reminding the golfer via SMS, WAP, voice or email 24 hours before the round is due to be played.
Automation also makes it easier for courses to accept bookings further ahead. Traditionally, bookings are only accepted up to a week ahead, whereas VeCommerce/303Sport's system takes individual bookings up to 30 days in advance and group bookings up to two years ahead.
Since bookings are prepaid, courses don't lose revenue if players fail to turn up.
Up to 400 courses are expected to use the system within two years.
The system is built on VeBooking, VeCommerce's entry to the ticketing arena, following successful implementations of NLSR for wagering (TAB, TAB Queensland, Tabcorp, SATAB and TasTAB), taxi ordering (Regent Taxis) and other applications.
NLSR "fulfils some of the promises made by the Internet hype and [for] ERP systems," said managing director Paul Magee, referring to its ability to reduce transaction costs, improve customer satisfaction and reduce the capital required by a business.
Capital markets have pushed companies to move onto the Internet, he said, and the work that's already been done to connect backend systems to the web can be leveraged when implementing NLSR.
