How Eguide Came to Be

The same challenges kept cropping up

Having a system developed entirely from scratch can be tailored precisely to a single organization. However, such a process also requires a significant investment of time, budget, and preparation.

In addition, it turned out that many tour guide organizations were facing similar challenges.

They needed to handle bookings, scheduling, guide management, customer management, and administrative and financial tracking.

For Code-on, this meant that similar processes had to be conceived and developed from scratch time and time again in various custom projects.

From Custom Solutions to a Shared Platform

That's where the idea behind Eguide came from.

Instead of building a completely new system from scratch for each tour company, a platform was developed that was based on the processes involved in guided tours and activities.

As a result, organizations no longer had to translate every aspect of their operations into software themselves.

Eguide thus evolved into a single, integrated platform for the day-to-day organization of tours and activities.

Built around the practice of guided tours

Those origins are still evident today in the way Eguide is structured.

For example, a tour isn't just about a date and a client.

There may be multiple groups, different languages, separate guides, a meeting point, prices, payments, and communication.

For ticketed events, operations revolve around fixed time slots, participants, and capacity.

Eguide supports both models within the same platform.

Different processes, interconnected data

The various components of the process are not independent of one another.

A booking can determine how many guides are needed. Those guides receive information about their assignment. The customer's information is used for communication and financial follow-up. And changes to the booking can also affect scheduling and administration.

By integrating these processes, the same information needs to be manually transferred between different systems less often.

Code-on still builds custom solutions

The development of Eguide does not mean that Code-on has stopped developing custom software.

On the contrary.

Code-on continues to develop websites and custom software for organizations with specific digital needs.

The main difference is that not every organization that offers guided tours or activities needs to have its entire operational software developed from scratch.

If the processes fit within Eguide, the existing platform can be used. If an organization also needs specific software that falls outside the scope of Eguide, a custom solution may still be the right choice.

Websites also remain an important part

From the very beginning, websites were part of the projects that led to the growth of Eguide.

That makes sense: for visitors, a booking often starts on the website, while the operational work takes place behind the scenes afterward.

A visitor chooses a tour or activity. This may be followed by scheduling, guides, customer communication, payment, and administration.

That is why a website can integrate with Eguide in various ways.

Keep Your Existing Website

You can link directly from an existing website to Eguide’s online booking flow [link to feature: online booking flow].

This way, your current website remains intact while the rest of the booking process takes place within Eguide.

Connecting Your Own Website via the API

An external website can also retrieve data such as listings, prices, and availability from Eguide via the API.

This way, visitors can make their selections right on your website and then proceed to Eguide's booking process.

A fully integrated website

Code-on also develops fully integrated websites that connect directly to Eguide.

This website service is separate from the Eguide platform itself and can be selected when an organization wants to revamp its public website in addition to implementing the software.

From a single customer inquiry to a broader platform

So the idea behind Eguide did not stem from a theoretical software concept.

It stemmed from specific projects.

By building websites and custom software for tour guide organizations, Code-on gained an increasingly clear understanding of the recurring processes.

From there, it became possible to standardize a large part of those operations without losing sight of the specific realities of guided tours and activities.

Eguide continues to evolve

One advantage of a SaaS platform is that further development is not carried out by a single organization.

New features and improvements may be relevant to various organizations that use similar processes.

At the same time, not every customer has to use Eguide in exactly the same way.

Product offerings, availability, prices, roles, communication, and various other settings can be customized to suit your organization's operations.

In this way, Eguide combines a shared software platform with flexibility for different ways of working.

Built on experience in the industry

So today, Eguide and Code-on each have a clear role.

Code-on continues to develop websites and custom software.

Eguide offers a specialized platform for organizations that organize guided tours and activities.

What connects the two is the same origin: building digital solutions around specific operational problems.

For Eguide, this resulted in a single platform that integrates bookings, scheduling, guides, customers, and financial tracking.

Curious about all the things Eguide can do today? Check out all the features or request a demo.