American Express Business Travel today is announcing a reorganization of senior management, strong first-quarter financial results and the advancement of its efforts to deploy its Rearden Commerce-based Axiom tool.
Meanwhile, San Mateo, Calif.-based Rearden Commerce today is announcing the launch of an application that integrates content from online dining guides, including Zagat and OpenTable, as well as Google Maps and Maponics. The Total Dining Experience feature recommends in-policy restaurants to travelers who can book reservations and sends confirmations to guests via Microsoft Outlook or Lotus notes.
American Express is globalizing its Field Effectiveness team, which will report directly to David Herrick, senior vice president and general manager for Business Travel in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Lane Dubin now heads the global sales team as vice president of global account sales and maintains his responsibilities as vice president of enterprise sales for North America. Dubin will report to Andrew McGraw, executive vice president and general manager of business travel for North America. Global advisory services now will report to Joe Terrion, vice president and general manager of global business partnerships.
Andrew Winterton, senior vice president and head of global supplier relations and partnering network, now has responsibility for Latin America and this week will announce Juan de Lapuerta as vice president and general manager for Latin America and the Caribbean.
The company claimed $1.1 billion in sales of new business for the first quarter of 2007, which McGraw said primarily has come from North American and European markets. He attributed the November launch of Axiom as a main driver of the sales growth. McGraw last week told BTN that Amex has more than 350 corporate users and 200 accounts fully deployed. Axiom, which Amex initially positioned for midmarket clients, also has drawn large-market interest, he said, and Amex plans an international rollout of the tool in 2008, first targeting English-speaking markets. The product is available for U.S. clients and has some functionality in the United Kingdom.
McGraw also cited the TravelBahn DS distribution platform—which has allowed some clients to avoid pass-through fees levied after content agreements between global distribution systems and airlines
(BTN, Sept. 11, 2006)—as a factor in garnering new business. "Most new clients who were with somebody else had incurred a charge of some kind from their legacy provider, and our ability to protect them on the content and also protect them financially has been a part of it as well," he said
Also driving new American Express Business Travel business is its recently completed global standardization of the user interface for agents. "Sometimes standardization gets a bum rap," McGraw said, "but the truth is that standardization is what gives you the ability to be more nimble and custom, because you take all of the nuances out of the supply chain and when you can get to a standard process, you really have the ability to drive higher quality."