“I started the business in 1994, and have been working with Vertical Systems since 1998. I came from Avis, which was all online. We had our own email before the web really existed; we could see where any vehicle was at any time around the world, its mileage, its revenue. So when I came to the travel industry, I said “Wow!” You couldn’t see revenue, for example; you just had all these diaries everywhere! My business partner proposed using spreadsheets, but I went out there and had a look around. I met Peter Healey, and we met again at World Travel Market. It’s fair to say that we got on well on a personal basis; you were in touch with the management of the company. At the time I needed to link the four agencies, and we’ve been with them ever since. There’s never an issue, and on a day-to-basis we work with Rob Barker and his team of programmers. If there’s ever a problem, they just jump straight in. They are very open to listening to what people say. For example, when we set up Athena Holidays, two of their guys came down and helped us. They thrashed it out ­ that’s the sort of company they are. Vertical hosts our website, among other things. We’re a member of the Advantage Travel Partnership, so there’s an overbranded site. Vertical provides the feed for the internet, email and TARSC. Front and back-end, we take it to full profit and loss. We need a clean system. Vertical’s V-CRM is quite new for us, and we’re just testing it at the moment. It’s web-based, and we’re in the early stages of experimenting with it, as we’ve just signed up. Vertical fully understands because of its other businesses. They’re travel and sales people, they’re not just techies. They have five or six different travel companies, they’re in touch ­ you can ask them as travel people; they’re not just software suppliers.”