Amex Revamps Reporting Products

<I>New York</I> - Even as the Big Blue computer was capturing headlines worldwide for its barnstorming success in the world of chess, American Express Corporate Services last week unveiled plans to harness the power of the same computer for the benefit of its corporate travel customers.

Renewing its focus on its traditional strength in providing comprehensive travel management data, Amex announced a sweeping overhaul of its entire MIS reporting product line. In the next few months, Big Green will be pressing forward with new Internet and intranet versions of virtually every piece of software in its inventory, moving to global platforms and adding a couple of new pawns to the chessboard to boot. Behind the scenes, it will be warehousing data in a huge IBM SP2 Unix processor, and offer corporate customers data-mining and decision-support techniques to search for travel patterns, cost savings opportunities and potential cases of fraud.

"It's a new organization, a new strategy and new products," said Raphael Carty, vice president of the newly reorganized Global Information Services division. Formed over the past year by melding American Express' own MIS staffers at home and in Europe with those acquired over the years from Thomas Cook and Competitive Technologies Inc., the GIS division boasts a 300-member staff and a new global focus, Carty said.

The results of their efforts will be apparent by August, when GIS will roll out Power Portfolio: Pre-TripPower, a Windows-compatible version of Amex's existing PDQ system; an Internet version of CardPower; and a new product, ExpensePower. Together, the three products will allow travel managers to quickly and easily produce global reports from their booking, corporate card and expense report data, respectively.

As the first application of its data warehouse capabilities, next month Amex will roll out the industry's first Global Air Sector reports, which will allow travel managers to accurately track actual origin and departure data worldwide, Carty said.

"Our customers are telling us that there has been information overload in the travel industry as they slog through all this data," Carty said. "They are asking us to automate every step of the cycle, from actual costs to benchmarking data to information that's ready for negotiating. Specifically, they want the ability to quantify the savings they have achieved and to identify the savings opportunities they might realize."

The goal is to make Amex's reporting products the most comprehensive in the industry--including reports "for every size company worldwide and every type of data imaginable"--and to offer "unique savings opportunities" through the latest data warehousing technology, Carty said.

Moving the entire GIS product line to an Internet-based platform was a quick about-face undertaken about eight months ago in response to client demand. About to release updated products in a client-server environment, GIS executives noted the sudden and skyrocketing interest in private corporate intranets, and asked customers if they would prefer a quick launch of client-server products or a delayed launch of Web-enabled ones. Unanimously, Carty said, customers said they'd wait for the Web.

"The early adopters are going intranet," he said. "At a recent meeting of our multinational accounts, every one of the 12 customers in attendance had plans for an intranet this year, and some are already in the second wave of applications." And moving to an intranet platform allows customers to "go beyond the power of the PC to a huge database that can be accessed by multiple users."

Prices for the three Power Portfolio products will be determined on a customer-by-customer basis depending on such criteria as platform and service requirements. Customers do not have to buy all three pieces, "but if they do, they can access all their data in one elegant system," Carty said. Customers using both CardPower and ExpensePower can compare charged data with expensed data and vice versa, or produce reports on charges not expensed and expenses not charged.

In keeping with the system's global vision, front-end interfaces and back-end reports are available in English, French, German and Spanish. That means that U.S. travel managers can enter data in English, which their divisions in Europe can access over the corporate intranet and use to produce reports in their native languages.

Amex's travel manager customers said the agency is certainly on the right track in focusing on delivering the data that will help them negotiate global deals. "We're all looking to globalize our travel programs where that makes sense," said Mike Prado, worldwide corporate travel manager for Hartford, Conn.-based United Technologies Corp. "We're always interested in products that help ease the administration and management of those programs. We spend $40 million on hotels worldwide, and often our Otis Elevator division will have a different rate than Carrier Heating and Air Conditioning. Standardizing our rates worldwide and leveraging our volume will take cost out of the purchasing process, and having global data is the key to doing that."

As far as origin and destination information, Prado said he "suspects that information might impact negotiations less than some people might think," but added that the ability to separate out stops where people are simply changing planes from those that are actual destinations will surely provide a more accurate picture of a corporation's travel patterns. "It all comes down to the credibility of data," he said. "The more credible your numbers, the better your bargaining position."

Several UTC units are reviewing the new Amex offerings, and on the corporate level, the company is "reviewing its overall relationship with American Express," which currently holds a minority piece of UTC's as-yet-unconsolidated account, Prado said.