Ghent Guides: From Access to Modern Software

Gentse Gidsen [link to case detail: Gentse Gidsen] organizes guided tours in Ghent and works with a large network of guides to do so. There’s a lot of administrative work involved in these tours: tracking availability, scheduling guides, managing tours, and ensuring that the financial records are accurate.

For years, a significant portion of those operations relied on Microsoft Access. When the existing system became technically obsolete, Code-on was asked to develop a new custom solution.

That project wasn't just a modernization for Gentse Gidsen. The insights we gained from it also later contributed to the development of Eguide.

From an Outdated System to a Custom Solution

The existing Access system had served its purpose for years, but was beginning to show more and more limitations.

The task, therefore, was not simply to rebuild the same software using newer technology.

We had to take another look at the day-to-day operations of Gentse Gidsen: What information does the secretariat need? How is the availability of guides tracked? How are guided tours assigned? And what information do the guides themselves need?

Based on that, Code-on developed a new solution tailored to the organization's needs.

To learn more about the specific results and Gentse Gidsen’s own experience, you can read the full customer story.

Not every tour guide organization operates the same way

Gentse Gidsen wasn't the first project in which Code-on developed software for an organization that offers guided tours.

We had previously developed a custom solution for Vizit.

The two organizations had some of the same needs, but their day-to-day operations differed significantly.

Different approach, different priorities

At Vizit, factors such as detailed daily planning and collaboration with external partners played an important role.

At Gentse Gidsen, the focus was more on shorter tours, the availability of guides, and the efficient assignment of tasks.

That difference was important.

It showed that tour management software cannot simply impose a single, fixed workflow. At the same time, certain processes kept recurring: bookings, scheduling, guides, customers, and financial tracking.

Guide Scheduling as a Key Challenge

For Gentse Gidsen, the office needed to be able to quickly see which guides were available and who was assigned to which tour.

The guides themselves also needed to get a handle on their own schedules.

That distinction between the central administration and the information a guide needs is still evident in Eguide today.

Guide scheduling is part of central operations, while guides can track their own assignments and relevant information through the Guide Portal.

The current Eguide platform is not the same system that was custom-built for Gentse Gidsen back then. However, the operational challenges we encountered during such projects remain familiar.

The website also had to be in line with that

The assignment went beyond mere internal administration.

Gentse Gidsen also wanted to offer visitors the option to book a guided tour and pay directly through the website.

That raised a second important question: How do you ensure that what a visitor does on the website aligns well with the operational processes behind the scenes?

After all, an online booking isn't the end of the process.

Next, the tour must be scheduled, a guide must be assigned, and other administrative tasks must be completed.

That connection is still important today

That relationship between the website and the back office is also important within Eguide.

Organizations can link directly to the online booking process from their existing website.

In addition, an external website can use the API to access information from Eguide, including listings, availability, and prices.

Code-on also continues to develop websites and custom software. A fully integrated website can be built as a separate service alongside Eguide.

What We Took Away from the Project

Projects such as Gentse Gidsen and Vizit made it clear that organizations offering guided tours often encounter the same types of problems.

The exact way they work varies, but many common elements are found in all of them:

• reservations;
• planning;
• guides and availability;
• customer information;
• prices and payments;
• financial monitoring;
• and the link to the website.

With custom solutions, you have to analyze and develop those components from scratch for each organization.

Sometimes that's exactly what's needed. Code-on still develops custom software today when an organization has specific processes that require it.

But for many organizations, it turned out that there was also enough common ground to take the discussion further.

From Custom Experience to Eguide

The experience gained from various projects for tour guide organizations thus contributed to the creation of Eguide.

Instead of completely redeveloping the same core processes over and over again, we were able to consolidate them into a specialized SaaS platform.

Today, Eguide supports, among other things, bookings, scheduling, guide management, customer management, and financial tracking.

This allows organizations to start with software that is already designed for their specific type of operations, without needing a custom development process for the entire foundation.

Custom Solutions and SaaS Side by Side

The story of Gentse Gidsen also shows that custom solutions and SaaS are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

The custom solutions that Code-on has developed over the years have given us insight into how different organizations actually operate.

That knowledge could then be used to support shared processes in Eguide.

And if an organization today has digital needs that fall outside the scope of Eguide, custom software remains an option.

In this way, both approaches start from the same question: Which software best suits the organization's operations?

Read the full success story of Ghent Guides or discover what Eguide can do today.