Buyers Leveraging Intranet Platform

By BTN / November 12, 2000

Buyers Leveraging Intranet Platform

Travel buyers Harriet Washburn, vice president of travel for Aon Service Corp., Andy Menkes, former vice president of travel for HSBC Bank USA (BTN, Nov. 6), and Chris Staal, director of corporate travel for Thomson Corp., and president of McCord Travel Management Daniel Keller, recently spoke with BTN editors about the status of and potential for travel pages on corporate intranets.

BTN: How long have you had a travel page on your corporate intranet?

Harriet Washburn: Aon has had an intranet site for two or three years, but we are in the throes of launching a very vigorous renewal. It's going to be called the Knowledge Exchange. It will have all information, both internal to the core business as well as with central services. And the travel site is going to be one of the first that comes out in the relaunch, so we're quite excited. We've just put the first portion, just the travel policy and our global hotel directory, on it about two months ago.

Chris Staal: Our site has been up for about 18 months, but we've just revamped it now, so it's a lot more robust than it was. Before, it was a somewhat mechanical system.

Andy Menkes: I've had an intranet site up for two years and nine months. I put one up, where one did not exist, three months after I had started with the company. So, it was built from scratch. It was the first one.

BTN: So you invented the intranet?

Menkes: When I first was hired by the bank, I went to one of our IT people and said, "I want to put out a corporate travel intranet site." And he said, "What do you want on there?" And I said, "travel policy, hotel program, preferred suppliers, hyperlinks and the like." And he said, "Call me in a week and I'll give you a quote." A week later, I went to his desk and he said, "OK, it's going to take a quarter of a million dollars and six man months." So I said, "How much faster and cheaper would it be if a woman did it?" I went out and got my own software and built this thing from scratch and went back a month later and showed him and he said, "Who did that?" I said, "Me."

Washburn: What was your end cost?

Menkes: $99 for the software, and then my time.

BTN: And how much of that?

Menkes: I did the first basic template on a bus ride on the way to work, but that was a four-page site. It's now at about 45 pages. So it was probably the equivalent of a month's work of person time. It became a labor of love and the more you do it, the more you put in.

BTN: What are the components of the travel page and how often do you update it?

Menkes: There's a newsletter, preferred suppliers, hotel program, travel policy and hyperlinks to other sites. There are also individual city profiles for the top 20 cities we travel to, so you know where the office is, how to get to it from the airport, things like ground transportation and safety. And there's even a page on leisure.

Washburn: And ours is much the same. We're having great fun with the hyperlinks. We're trying to make it an appealing place to visit, so we are putting in all kinds of things that people like to play with: currency conversion and weather and traffic. We also subscribe to Kroll reports and we put our global hotel program out there, with links to all of the preferred suppliers.

BTN: What role did your agency play in helping you to develop the site?

Washburn: Not very much, but not because they were intractable or unresponsive. Largely, we had internal resources and I came from Carlson Wagonlit Travel with my own ideas as to how I wanted it to look. And actually I've done a significant amount of pirating from sites I've seen from peers, both when I served them and now in my counterpart role. There really wasn't a need to involve the agency.

BTN: How long were you at Carlson Wagonlit?

Washburn: I was there for 10 years, serving most recently as vice president of the northwest region for Carlson Wagonlit and also vice president of multinational accounts. I left Feb. 28.

BTN: So you were able to draw on that background?

Washburn: Exactly. And people have been gracious in showing me their sites.

BTN: Dan, what role has McCord been playing in helping corporate clients create travel pages?

Daniel Keller: Traditionally, the national accounts that we are doing business with generally range from $5 million to $65 million in U.S. booked air volume. With some of the companies, we have gotten into a very strong relationship building process at very senior levels. There have been six or seven accounts that we have been quite active with.

Harriet was mentioning strategic sourcing earlier and more of our accounts are looking at strategic sourcing initiatives. So, from a corporate intranet perspective, a lot of what they are looking at is: what value can be added; what ways can we streamline what we are doing today; what cost-cutting measure might we take advantage of; how might they link to sites, whether it be ours or other suppliers; how might we help them with certain areas that they're not as sophisticated with, such as chartering aircraft. By being involved in six or seven companies, that certainly doesn't make us an expert by any means, but we've learned an awful lot.

BTN: Is the corporate intranet travel site part of your strategic future?

Keller: I believe it is. I think it's very important for us to be involved in their intranet, whether it be from a booking tool or T&E expense management.

BTN: So do you foresee a place on the corporate intranet for the agency?

Keller: I think it's going to depend on the culture of some companies, but absolutely I do at this point and time.

Menkes: We've had one. When we first put up the Web site, we had a link to the preferred agency partner because we used Carlson regularly, they already knew the company, so rather than having to create our own database and update it, we just linked it to theirs.

BTN: Are there any services the agency provides that support the intranet travel page?

Menkes: I guess the closest thing is that worldwide policy survives on 24-hour service. So one of the things we list is their 24-hour numbers and the countries in which they exist.

BTN: Do you have online booking and expense reporting links there too?

Menkes: Yes and no. What we've had up now also for two and a half years is an Internet-based look and book product called Travelpoint. It's part of Apollo Galileo USA. On virtually every page there is a flashing airplane that links to our Travelpoint page. So, our staff has been able to look at flight schedules as well as self-book, because with Travelpoint it will book in our negotiated fares and queue it to the corporate travel department.

Washburn: Don't you also have a pilot program with British Airways?

Menkes: Yes.

Washburn: Is it on the intranet site?

Menkes: The British Airways program is not accessible to the travelers. It's only bookable by the CTD staff, but we have an extranet link to British Airways, which is a link to the local sales office in London, as well as a link to the local sales office in the United States.

BTN: Do you foresee making that available to the travelers?

Menkes: Yes. The system we are using is a professional airline reservation system, so you have to know the equivalent of British Airways formats, like a British Airways res agent. Our CTD staff is trained in it. The next step we've talked about with BA is to put a GUI in front of it, so the travelers could self-book.

BTN: What do the travelers get through the extranet currently?

Menkes: If there are any promotions that British Airways is running in the United Kingdom, they are unique to our account. They also have the ability to e-mail our U.K. or U.S. account managers. In a sense, they have their own Web site within our Web site. So if a traveler has a question or comment about British Airways, they can go to either of the two sites and send an e-mail right to our account manager.

Keller: One of the twists with having our company being involved with some of the corporations when they're working on intranets is that we put the agent team on the intranet under their travel site with bios and pictures of the team. In return, they will allow us to share a piece of their corporate intranet, though obviously not have access to all of it. For their senior executives and officers, they will share information that's not private with our agents as well. So it has had a real positive effect on both sides of the relationship.

BTN: Harriet, how about you, do you have a presence or a link to the agency on your site?

Washburn: We do not, although we maintain sort of a flat and non-interruptive bulletin board with how to contact them if you need to. We don't see the need for a link at this point. We really don't want people e-mailing because that's fairly inconvenient and inefficient, it's much easier to pick up the phone. We are in a call center environment.

BTN: What about online booking?

Washburn: We are taking a somewhat careful look because my own sense is that we are going to buy something and it is going to turn out to be Beta and the world's going to go VHS. So I want to be fairly cautious.

We are looking with some seriousness at Chicago where we have a great number of room nights and a number of administrative people who book the hotel directly. Several of our preferred hotels have offered a site just to book hotel rooms in Chicago, which we think is going to be interesting.

We are using Galileo wireless for the Web phone test, which we see as probably the first step in getting technology into people's hands.

And we are looking at group and meeting software. We certainly would put that on this site, once we're confident that we can select one that will have some longevity. Like the idea of being able to reach the whole population for meeting registration and post common tenants of how to do a meeting: how to check your contract and/or where to send it for review. That probably is the first area of interest to us. The online booking tools and the expense reimbursement tools have had so much turnover and so much acquisition and such less than robust stock prices that before I recommend something, I'd rather be a little more conservative.

BTN: That would mean you don't have any current group and meeting functionality on the intranet?

Washburn: No, but that would probably be the first place we would start.

BTN: How far away do you think you are from making that choice?

Washburn: We've just conducted first round reviews last week and I'd like to think that we will have made a selection by year-end and have something launched by the first of the year.

BTN: Is there an investment that you plan to make to get the corporate intranet site to where you want it?

Washburn: We recently promoted someone internally whom we call the Web Czar and he's a resource that we have available to us. So it would really largely be his salary and then very small development costs, but we are managing it internally. He's a resource that's used by other departments beyond travel. Because we are launching, he's been marvelous in giving us probably 25 percent to 30 percent of his time.

BTN: Andy, is there anything that you need to spend money on to bring your intranet site to the next level?

Menkes: Well it got to be so popular and so labor intensive that I have outsourced it to my assistant. And we've also migrated it from HTML to Domino, because we primarily use Lotus Notes. There's a lot more flexibility in a Domino environment, both in terms of access across the system, globally, as well as the ability to create a search engine.

BTN: Dan, within the agency, there's got to be a line item for the money that you're spending, first of all on technology, but also money specifically to be spent on resources for assisting with these corporate intranets.

Keller: Certainly, it's important to have the appropriate investment in technology and we try to manage that expense like any other good company. We also have formed a strategic consulting arm as it relates to such specific technology items as T&E expense management and online booking tools. And we've had pretty remarkable success in terms of companies being interested in having more information and us consult with them. There certainly is some additional, incremental revenue that we're generating as a result.

BTN: Are you spending money specifically on intranet development?

Keller: Andy mentioned Lotus Notes and Domino, and that's the platform that we've had at McCord for about eight years. We've invested in excess of $1 million in the infrastructure of Lotus Notes and on the Domino platform, but I don't know the exact amount this year.

BTN: Chris, are you tracking usage of your site?

Staal: We are tracking usage, which makes it challenging because it's not just for people within the parent company or the holding company at Thomson, but for all the companies we own. We don't get a lot of feedback when it works real smooth, but we sure get a lot of feedback when something's outdated, particularly when it comes to hotels. Even though it's an annual process, it seems like we are always sneaking them in there as we go to meet business needs.

BTN: Have you improved compliance through the corporate intranet?

Staal: We have. We want travelers to think of our Web site first to give them the most meaningful information that relates to them, but also give them options for other things, such as linking right to preferred airlines' Web sites.

BTN: Have you been able to measure the impact of the travel page?

Staal: The only measurement we have is when we do acquisitions. All of the sudden you'll see the surge because they realize what a great resource that is. Typically, though, we don't measure internally on a day-to-day basis. And that's mostly a manpower issue. We're more concerned about tying in to the corporate Web site and getting people coming here first.

BTN: Chris, what are the components of your site?

Staal: We do traveler safety for going internationally. We pull in meetings. We are trying to parlay that more into transient travel. So, if someone is looking at going to a certain destination, we've begun to identify key locations that Thomson or its companies have worked with in the past and we want to build more of a strategic relationship as opposed to the one-time event.

We have a directory of all our preferred suppliers. We've gone so far as to put components of the contracts on there, in addition to the contact names with the different hotels and airlines that we work with.

BTN: Are you continuing to publish print versions of the hotel directories?

Staal: No. We stopped doing the print versions. For certain executives who still want that, I am more than happy to run it off on our color printer, but it's staying on the site. And we have begun to include the international locations, which we hadn't. So, all of the U.K. locations are there. We're doing the same in Asia/Pacific.

BTN: Harriet, you said earlier that while your hotel program is online, you are never going to rely on that alone.

Washburn: Not for the foreseeable future, because people who are on the road a lot like something that's shaped like a Zagat's. So it's not that exhaustive, because we have heavy concentrations in key cities. It's much more convenient to have it handy.

BTN: Is that your philosophy, Andy?

Menkes: No, we are paper averse. By definition, the entire program is in the intranet. That's where the agents find it as well. Our agents have GDS capability, as well as Internet and intranet. So when they're looking up a hotel, they're seeing the same thing the traveler can see. Because we need to be able to make changes, paper won't work. By the time you print it, it's outdated. Because it's a dynamic directory, if a particular property wants to make a special for the month of October in Hong Kong, we can support it. And the only way to do that is to do it electronically. And the last piece is, we don't want travelers calling the hotels directly, so why give them a book to allow them to violate policy?

BTN: Have you seen an impact on compliance with preferred hotel vendors and hotel policy?

Menkes: I can't say that because of the intranet that we are getting better compliance. I can just say because of the intranet, people are better informed as to where they are staying.

BTN: Dan, are your clients phasing out publishing printed hotel directories?

Keller: Yes, every one of them. To Andy's point, there is no quicker way to disseminate that type of information than to just make an adjustment on that intranet hotel program and send a fax or e-mail to everybody and let them know. And, quite frankly, we would like to get rid of the paper versions inside of the agency as well. It's very costly. They are heavy to send out and manipulate.

Washburn: The agency ones are encyclopedic.

Keller: There's a sizable cost, in the six figures. And, of course, in a management fee environment we are more inclined, based on the margins we're receiving, to try to negotiate that into a program if the customer is interested in that book. Most customers are less inclined to use that book. I've never quite understood the real value it holds.

Washburn: Ours are very slender. They're about 40 pages. They're coil bound. They're not that expensive to produce. And because we have a lot of travel heavily concentrated in some areas to a point where its dynamic and it changes, we will update it online.

But I don't think that they are as obsolete as they would be if we had a more diverse group of cities included. We have fairly deep-seated relationships in the cities where we are concentrated.

BTN: How much is the cost?

Washburn: Under $100,000. I mean, it's not significant.

BTN: What's the impact of having the corporate intranet site on the globalization of your travel program?

Staal: The greatest benefit, at least at Thomson, is it's made it far easier in terms of communication. That was always a challenge before, telling the U.K. what they get, telling Latin America what they receive. That's much smoother now, because it's in one place.

Menkes: I would say the biggest benefit is, because of the communication, travel productivity for both the traveler and the travel arranger. Especially for a first time traveler.

Washburn: It is significant that the site is accessible globally, but at the same time not all of the preferred suppliers are global. It has generated significant interest for consolidated purchasing in such areas as Latin America. It has created sufficient interest that we're putting forth a global travel council and we are going to be doing much more collaborative purchasing with our overseas entities as a result of things that have been noted on the Web site.

Keller: One of the biggest areas is being able to share ideas across the globe. But, what I've seen as some real benefits for the corporation is on the programs that we have worked on with them to negotiate preferred supplier rates, they've had difficulty in some cases getting compliance across the board and getting certain department heads to adhere to that area. It seems that when you put in an intranet, it generates a lot more interest from the senior management level.

There's also a couple of areas where we've used it pretty effectively on a global basis. For example, we put a preferred car rental rate and the upgrade form on the intranet for a U.S.-based company but global in nature. They let everybody fill out that form and had it funneled directly to that supplier but, doing it on a global basis, it's much more difficult to get that type of a response. It's not as easy to do on an airline site, but we're working on it.

BTN: What are the other benefits?

Menkes: We had a hotel director of sales and a general manager come in to see me. They wanted to get more market share, so we showed them the intranet site. And they gave us a new rate. I said, "If you make it even lower, you'll get top billing." So, I was actually able to negotiate a rate on the spot and load it on the intranet site in front of them to demonstrate that by making that deal, they'll get better visibility. So, it can be a negotiating tool.

BTN: Chris, have you had any luck with improved negotiating as a result of the intranet?

Staal: We actually did the opposite of Andy. Instead of doing it ourselves, we actually went to the supplier because we don't want it to be a price-only relationship. Price kind of gets you in the door and once you are in the door, it's all about marketing. So, the Four Seasons in Toronto actually developed on their Web site, a Web page just for Thomson. So, in part of the internal marketing on our Web site, we say the Four Seasons is a preferred vendor. But if they go to the Four Seasons Toronto, they actually have a special place they can go on their Web site that they maintain that tells our travelers all about the specific things just for Thomson employees.

Washburn: We don't even know everything that we are going to put on there. One thing that I neglected to mention, we're now Swabiz users. We are encouraging everyone to put their Southwest business on the Internet because we avoid the agency fee. Travelers accumulate points more quickly and Swabiz allows you to track the volume.

Keller: For companies that fly a lot internationally, a very large time waster in terms of usage of agent time or travel arranger time is visa and passport information. Having visa and passport information on corporate intranets, especially to frequently traveled destinations, can save an awful lot of time and improve productivity.

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