<B> Folio Data Arrives</B>
By Maria P. Vallejo
Working with IBM and Bass Hotels & Resorts, software developer DB Technologies next week will implement its hotel folio data solution at five additional hotels and begin making the information available industrywide.
The Iselin, N.J.-based company started working last September with its first, and so far only, corporate buyer, IBM. In a three-month beta test (<I>BTN,</I> Oct. 12, 1998), DB Technologies used its Report Automation System Capture (RAS-Cap) in a White Plains, N.Y., Crowne Plaza to successfully transfer 2,000 folios a month via IBM's NEDS travel expense reporting system.
During the past three months, DB Technologies installed the technology, which enables the prepopulation of expense reports with full folio charges, at Crowne Plaza hotels located in Atlanta, Chicago, Manhattan, San Francisco and Tampa.
Following next week's cutover, 20,000 IBM employees who do business at those properties also will have access to the long-awaited expense processing capability.
And more IBMers soon will follow suit as up to 25 Crowne Plaza hotels are expected to provide IBM with electronic folio data this year.
Once deployed, however, the technology will not be for the exclusive use of IBM travelers. "We've tackled the technology and demonstrated that we can do this cost-effectively, and we are in process of improving this and making it widely available," said Dave Wechsler, president of DB Technologies. "There are a significant number of companies that could process this data if they receive it right now. Fortune 500 companies, for the most part, can handle this information today without too many changes."
In fact, all three of the beta-test partners hope to capitalize on the success of this breakthrough. While initially acting as the buyer for the project, IBM also will stand to gain from this experience on the sales side, when it adds the electronic hotel folio component to the expense reporting system it sells to external clients.
This upgrade to the reporting system will be available in the third quarter of this year, said Tony Angelo, IBM's project executive for worldwide employee disbursement.
Until then, however, this breakthrough will have a significant impact on IBM's frequent travelers by finally making it possible to automate the reporting portion of every part of a trip, and thus reduce the time it takes to process expense reimbursements from five days to just one.
"We already have air and car. From that perspective our employees are satisfied with the process," said John Rosato, IBM's manager of worldwide employee disbursement systems and control. "That's why we're being so aggressive. Our employees do see the value of not handling the paper."
Angelo expects the RAS-Cap system to be installed in 80 percent of IBM's preferred Bass properties, including those in Dallas, Denver and Los Angeles. When the project is completed, about two million IBM folios will be transferred yearly to its NEDS travel expense reporting system.
The RAS-Cap system is a small computer that attaches to any hotel's property management system and gives the PMS the illusion that it is connected to a printer. It then extrapolates the raw folio data during the nightly audit and transmits it to DB Technologies, which then separates the different folios based on various identification criteria. The folios then are e-mailed to the appropriate corporate buyers.
In IBM's case, the folio data is sent directly over the Internet to its NEDS system, where the information is checked against expense reports submitted by the company's individual travelers.
The success of the beta test and the further rollout of the product by the Crowne Plaza properties and the additional IBM employees are expected to entice more corporations and hotel companies to buy into the product.
"I think this rollout will help with momentum," Angelo said. "The first step was to prove the concept. Early on, none of us really thought this was a highly complex area, and it wasn't."
Scott Birnbaum, Crowne Plaza and Inter-Continental's vice president of marketing services and product development, agreed with Angelo's assessment.
"The potential is with every major company that has a sophisticated enough expense and reimbursement system," he said. "This is going to revolutionize the way the industry works. I think it's a matter of embracing what's inevitable in the industry. With air and car automated, it was only a matter of time for the hotel industry."
Bass Hotels & Resorts sees the rollout as an opportunity to strengthen its existing relationship with business travel buyers and possibly to pull some market share from their competitors, Birnbaum said. Atlanta-based Bass plans to roll out RAS-Cap to its other brands next year.
Starting in early June, the hotel company will begin surveying IBM travelers to see if they can detect a shift to Bass hotels because it is offering the electronic folio option.
"We'll be monitoring IBM business very closely," Birnbaum said. "When this was proposed to the various travel departments they were very excited about it. We think this could have a great influence in us getting more business."
This rollout could be the sign that other hotel companies are looking for to finally jump onboard.
"There has been a reluctance by the hotels to serve up data on hotel folios even though the companies get it anyway," Birnbaum added. "There's a feeling that this could come back to us in negotiations. It's taken some time to get over that."
Some hotel companies, including Best Western and Wyndham, already are working on their own version of an electronic folio capturing product, and the new Microsoft E-Commerce Alliance also is targeting this data (see story, page 1).
To further entice other hotel companies, DB Technologies in the past month has reduced the cost of the product, originally priced between $5,000 and $15,000. Hotels now can order the system over the telephone and install it themselves in under two hours' time, Wechsler said. This expedited method removes added installation costs.
DB Technologies also plans to take on another role. The software company, which plans to act as a clearinghouse for the folios, is creating a database for all the information, Wechsler said. He plans to negotiate the price for delivering data transmission and database service, depending on the size and needs of the individual corporate or hotel account.