Carlson First Out Of The Box

<H1>Carlson First Out Of The Box</H1> <I>New York</I> - Carlson Wagonlit Travel has become the first vendor to deliver a fully functional automated travel booking-through-expense-reporting system to the corporate market.

In as little as 45 days, Carlson claims, corporations that sign on the dotted line today can have the automated system on travelers' desks. The system allows them to book their own air, hotel and car reservations in real time and in accordance with corporate policy, and feeds booking and actual corporate card data onto electronic expense reports and into corporate general ledger systems.

In order to emerge from a crowded field as the first across the finish line, Carlson Wagonlit followed the "Don't reinvent the wheel" rule of software development. Its booking system is based on one developed by TravelNet, the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company headed by John Shoolery and Randy Malin. Its management reporting system is based on the Impromptu software from Cognos Corp. of Canada.

Carlson's suite of products, called ActOne, includes SoloAct, the booking product; InterAct, the management information reporting system; and TransAct, the expense-reporting module (BTN, April 8). Corporations can buy the pieces individually or as a unit. Unlike some vendors that plan to use a transaction-based pricing model, where corporations will pay a fee every time a traveler makes a booking, Carlson has opted instead for flat fees.

SoloAct is being offered free to Carlson customers who want to use it only for browsing flight information; users of the booking option will pay a monthly subscription fee of about $9. TransAct is priced at $69.95 per single-user copy, with volume discounts available. Corporations with 2,000 users, for example, will pay $44.95 apiece.

The InterAct reporting package is broken down further into three modules that can be purchased together or separately. The post-trip reporting package is $3,000; a pre-trip package can be added for $2,500; and a link to download data into expense reports is another $2,500. The three-piece InterAct package, bundled together, runs $7,000.

Travel technology consultant Bob Langsfeld said some corporations anxious to install automated systems may prefer transaction fees "to cut down on the purchasing approval process, where they need to put large outlays of cash into budgets far in advance, and it can take as long as 18 months to get everything approved and installed."

But one travel manager who in March switched her account to Carlson Wagonlit said she already is testing TransAct at one division, and soon will begin testing SoloAct as well. "I like the pay-for-it-up-front system, where our costs are clearly defined," she said. "And we feel that in the end we will not pay as much."

Getting approval for the expenditure was not a major issue, she added. "We're willing to put our money up when we know there is a return on our investment on the back end. We're looking at savings of about an hour and a half on our travelers' time, and anticipate cutting the number of people doing accounting functions."

"It comes down to the same lease-versus-buy decision as any other corporate purchase," said consultant Tom Wilkinson, president of Alexandria, Va.-based Travel Management Group. "People's initial gut reaction is that transaction fees will end up costing more, but the question is how long it will take until that happens. At some companies it's murder to get any significant outlay approved, but that's becoming easier as senior executives get increasingly involved in travel management and understand the strategic importance of having the company work more efficiently."

TravelNet's Shoolery credited Malin with putting together a deal that "assures us an exposure in the market that TravelNet alone would not have easily reached. We've passed the test of due diligence, with a key player attesting to our being a deployable product."

Carlson spokesman Doug Cody said corporations will see returns from their ActOne investment in a number of additional ways. Corporations can manipulate the system to show only preferred vendors, for example, pushing market share to those with whom negotiated deals have been cut, or use the data to cut new deals. Travel managers can add or delete preferred airlines or hotels on a moment's notice.

Cody said he could not comment on how SoloAct will affect Carlson's own travel management contracts, though he acknowledged that Carlson, too, should see administrative savings as customers book their own tickets. "We anticipate there will be a savings both to us and to our customers," he said. "We'll know how much in six months, when we have better data.