Oasis Overland

Business Description

Oasis Overland was formed by Chris Wrede and Steve Crowhurst 11 years ago when they realised that with 18 years of overlanding experience between them the time was right to begin their own venture. Their extensive knowledge of Africa, Middle East and South America had been gained by leading trips for larger more established companies, as well as their own independent traveling adventures.

By 1997 Steve had driven several Trans Africa expeditions and had designed and built a number of overland expedition vehicles. Chris had cycled across Africa and South America followed by work in the travel industry which involved sales, operations and tour leading.

Oasis Overland personally manage and run their business from a base in rural Somerset and are one of the few UK based overland companies to maintain their own UK workshop. Our vehicles are built and adapted for overland use with their crew (both experienced and new) receiving hands on training.

From humble beginnings, with two trucks they now have twelve in various guises operating on their trips in various continents and climates around the world.

Project Description

We were originally approached by Oasis Overland to build a new eCommerce website for their business, however this brief quickly changed into a complete system overhaul - and we were asked to revamp their website, eCommerce functionality and business application.

Historically, all of the Oasis Overland customer, bookings, payments, trips, trucks and passenger information was file based - so checking information took a long time and was becoming cumbersome as the business has grown.

Oasis Overland wanted to revamp the system that they used and modernise their internal business with the latest technology.

Solution

We developed a brand new business applications from the ground up. It was quite a daunting prospect, as a lot of the calculations that are done by Oasis Overland involving trips, trucks, dates and passengers, it was very important that they system was intuitive as possible.

The website features some great design including a time sensitive background which changes depending on what time of the day you visit at. It also features custom photo galleries, a Flickr account and lots of custom information - all controlled via the central content management system.

We chose to start with StrawberrySystem, our own CMS and then build new bespoke modules for Oasis Overland and their team to manage not just their eCommerce website, but their business online.

website: http://www.oasisoverland.co.uk