Case Study
Modernizing 30 years of tour operations
How Hafermann Reisen is replacing their AS400 legacy system with REISE ERP.
The client
Hafermann Reisen is a family-owned German bus tour operator based in Witten, North Rhine-Westphalia. Three legal entities — Hafermann Reisen, Hafermann Reisen Plus (river cruises), and Hafermann Reisen Exklusiv (exclusive group tours) — serve an older German demographic through ~1,400 partner agencies and an annual catalog.
They operate 10 owned VDL coaches and ~15 subcontractor buses, running everything from day trips to multi-week international tours.
The challenge
For 30 years, Hafermann ran on an AS400 system. Tour planning, hotel purchasing, pricing, booking, logistics, and finance — all operated through terminal interfaces built in a different era.
- • Departments operated in silos — no real-time data sharing
- • Manual data entry across disconnected systems
- • Institutional knowledge lived in people, not systems
- • No modern reporting, no API integration capability
- • Growing risk: the team maintaining the AS400 was aging out
The approach
We didn't build a generic ERP and ask Hafermann to adapt. We spent months learning their business — sitting with every department, understanding every workflow, mapping every data structure.
Collaborative sessions with the Hafermann team. Mock trips, schema reviews, workflow walkthroughs.
Architecture: production (REISE), development (REISESP), and legacy bridge (TOUROP) for incremental migration.
Modules designed and building — tour planning, hotel purchasing, pricing, logistics, finance, and more.
Program types supported — from day trips (TF) to multi-week international tours (FM, FR).
Current status
- ✓ Tour planning: live in production, daily use
- ✓ Product configuration: accommodations, room types, itineraries operational
- ✓ Hotel purchasing: automated email pipeline active with real-time tracking
- ✓ Hotel deduplication: cleaning and consolidating supplier data across 30 years of records
- ✓ 22 pricing tables: deployed, population in progress
- ✓ Data migration from AS400: running in parallel
- • Pricing engine: next major milestone
- • DATEV finance integration: designed, awaiting accounting regulations
The partnership
This isn't a vendor-client relationship — it's a partnership. The contract took 13 months to negotiate because both sides wanted to get it right. The company's patriarch is a power user who tests new features on evenings and weekends, sending detailed feedback with screenshots. Departments contribute directly to schema design.
Hafermann chose SKGT in an established market with existing competitors. They chose us because we didn't come with a pre-built product — we came with questions, notebooks, and a commitment to learning their business before writing a single line of code.
Under the hood
Tour pricing is one of the most complex parts of the travel industry. REISE ERP handles it with a three-component cost model:
Transport
Fixed costs — bus hire, fuel, driver wages. Calculated per tour regardless of occupancy.
Accommodation
Time-dependent — hotel rates vary by season, room type, and contract terms. Calculated per night per person.
Services
Mixed — entrance fees, guided tours, meals. Some fixed, some per-person, some optional add-ons.
This level of granularity means prices are calculated per tour instance, not per season — giving Hafermann flexibility their competitors can't match.
What's next
Full production go-live is targeted for July 2026. The pricing engine is the next major milestone, followed by logistics management and complete DATEV integration. The goal: Hafermann operates entirely from REISE ERP, with the AS400 retired and the first catalog produced from the new system.
Facing similar challenges?
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