Tech Pairs Take Center Court

<B> Tech Pairs Take Center Court</B>
<I>Sabre & IBM, Amex & Concur Announce End-to-End Partnerships</I>

By Mary Ann McNulty

<I>Orlando</I> - The race to produce end-to-end travel technology solutions has become a game of doubles, as the top seeds in booking systems team with the big names in expense reporting.

The question now is whether the corporate audience still is interested in packages that offer integrated booking, reporting and expense reporting applications.

A bevy of announcements at the National Business Travel Association convention here this month detailed plans for four end-to-end solutions that are either available now or will be by the end of the year. All are the result of partnerships that participants contend capitalize on the core competencies of the companies involved.

The new teams on the court were Sabre Business Travel Solutions and IBM; American Express and Concur Technologies; Internet Travel Network and Extensity, and TravelGuide Software, a company owned by several software developers who have combined, refined and integrated their respective products (<I>BTN,</I> Aug. 3).

American Express and Concur Technologies (formerly Portable Software) previewed XMS/AX, a version of Concur's Xpense Management Solution that integrates with Amex's AXI booking system.

Booking data from AXI and charges from the American Express corporate card are imported to XMS, allowing the traveler to download this data and simply fill in the details to complete an expense report. A common database that compares booked to expensed data also is available for travel decision makers.

Los Angeles-based Times Mirror Co. will be the first to beta test the new version, with about 25 users at headquarters. "If all the pieces of the puzzle fit together as we anticipate, we'll benefit in two ways," said Betty Lucero, travel services manager for The Times Mirror Resource Management Co. "First, we expect to capture more complete data by automating the expense reporting process using XMS. We intend to compare all the travel data available to manage our employees and supplier relationships more effectively. Next, we want to simplify the travel reservation process for our employees."

Times Mirror has 17 different operating companies, all with separate accounts payable and human resource systems. Lucero said she's seeking a way to consolidate the data without making drastic changes in the process.

Lucero said she will pay Amex different transactions fee for bookings made online versus by telephone.

Linking expense management to its booking tool might just be the first of a much broader offering from American Express. In its booth, Amex showed a prototype of an integrated corporate suite that not only included booking and expense, but purchasing as well, with links to order office supplies, chemicals or other goods.

Furthering their two-year working relationship, The Sabre Group and IBM announced plans to not only integrate BTS and the IBM Electronic Expense Reporting Solution, but also simplify and speed implementation and ongoing customer support. Based on feedback provided by early adopters of the combined product, the two companies identified ways they can streamline their offering. For example, they are working on ways to load policy and profiles only once instead of twice for those implementing both products.

One company will be named the lead contact for each joint account to coordinate everything. This shrink-wrapped, integrated offering will be available by year-end, with additional enhancements expected early next year. It is being designed for companies with as little as $1 million in annual travel and entertainment expenses. Typically, companies with this volume have fewer than 100 employees.

In going after this "mid-market," IBM and Sabre executives realized they have to provide a much lower cost and simple implementation, as these companies are not likely to have much IT support, said Ray Curatolo, project leader for IBM's EARS in Somers, N.Y. To lower the cost, the pair will offer the package on a per-transaction basis. IBM's EARS has only been offered as a site license, with most implementations costing in excess of $250,000.

"We think we can take the implementation process down to two months," from the four it's been taking for EARS, he added. Besides Schwab, General Dynamics Land Systems, SourceNet Solutions and National Semiconductor have separately purchased both the IBM and Sabre products.

Also unveiled at the NBTA show was TravelGuide Software's new TravelCenter which integrates a Web-based booking engine, quality control, expense reporting and management reports into a single database.

TravelGuide, a Baltimore software developer, is owned by Cal Simmons Travel, Cornerstone Information Systems and three technology companies. TravelCenter was developed by reworking the existing Windows-based reservation and expense- reporting products offered by the agencies that make them all Web-enabled, said TravelGuide CEO David Wallis.

Added Joe Koshuta, vice president of marketing, "We've had the reservation product live and installed at agencies and corporate Websites for at least 18 months. What we've been concentrating on for the last four or five months is integrating and making them Internet-based."

Although the software was designed to accept credit card feeds, Wallis said the company hasn't yet activated this feature as it's trying to figure out a way to get the elusive hotel folio feed. The reservation product currently has an interface to Apollo/Galileo, although a second GDS interface is expected by year-end. In fact, the DirectRes booking component is private labeled by Galileo as the disk-based Travelpoint.com.

TravelCenter is available as either a site license, with a price ranging from $25,000 to $50,000, or as a service bureau, where per user, per month fees are expected to total $5,000 to $15,000, Koshuta said.

Also at the NBTA show, ITN announced its latest partnership with expense vendor Extensity to forge an end-to-end solution. Last year, ITN signed pacts with expense vendors Portable (now Concur) and Captura. By year-end, it expects to have interfaces to all three expense products.