When Rearden Commerce first emerged six years ago as a self-described "stealth" company called Gazoo, its aim in travel was simple enough: bring trip-planning technology to mobile devices. In 2001, when it was called Talaris, Rearden expanded its scope in an effort to deliver dining and shipping reservations to users of Sabre's GetThere corporate-travel booking tool. Talaris also started talking about feeding reservations information into corporate employees' calendar and groupware applications.
Three years later, a handful of former GetThere employees including its product development manager had joined Talaris, and the company's broader vision for connecting traditional travel-booking technology with tools for other indirect categories began to materialize. Having gained more interest from investors and resellers--along the way, shedding the GetThere partnership--Talaris by 2004 was marketing the opportunity to add remote conferencing and ground transportation to its services menu.
With a new name, Rearden Commerce in early 2005 formally launched an employee business services technology platform that founder, chairman and CEO Patrick Grady had described to Forbesas "a reservation system for all services." The product brings together all the aforementioned services, with the potential for more, into a single Web-based, employee-facing application.
Rearden uses a number of technology catch phrases in its marketing, but techies seem to agree that what drives the firm's atypical approach is its use of what's known as service-oriented architecture. Travel e-commerce research firm PhoCusWright defines SOA as "an application architecture in which services are defined using a description language, with business process interfaces that are platform-independent, making services generally available to clients regardless of which operating system, device or language they are using."
The SOA employs web services to integrate various technology pieces using standardized communications protocols, such as XML, which among other things allows vendors to "plug in" to what Rearden calls its merchant network. Meanwhile, building on SOA concepts, Rearden's solution contains a handful of components used by employees, procurement or category managers, and IT professionals.
Rearden's personal assistant interface allows end users to book various services, updates Microsoft Outlook or Lotus Notes calendars, sends invitations using the employees' contact directories and alerts them to changes. Transactions are processed with consideration of employee preferences and corporate identities, as well as company policies.
According to Grady, "We treat the user experience like a religion."
The solution also considers corporate needs. "Rearden shifts the burden of making cost/convenience tradeoffs from travel procurement to the traveler," according to company documents. "In the old model, travel procurement made the decision to not present a particular flight option because of its cost. In the new model, the traveler can view all options, and is trusted to make a reservation that meets his or her business needs at the lowest cost. Travel procurement flags preferred options, but does not prevent employees from booking more expensive options if needed."
The firm's services console lets managers click to select preferred suppliers, alter policies, create outlay caps or approval processes, track purchase activity, assign employees to policy groups (based on human resources data) and define which services they can purchase. Having signed clients including GlaxoSmithKline, Kenneth Cole Productions, Pfizer and Whirlpool, Rearden claimed its offering saves double-digit percentages on non-purchase-order buying and processing costs.
The company also said the technology can be deployed in as little as six weeks, provided by Rearden via the Web on an as-needed basis utilizing "software as a service" and "on-demand computing" concepts. Such deployment requires relatively little internal tech support, the company said.
For its "homegrown" booking software, Rearden is using the renowned airline shopping engine from ITA Software, Northstar Travel Media's hotel directory and mapping services from MapORama. It also has signed a large number of travel management company distributors, including new part-owner American Express, and is considering partnerships for expense management and other applications.