CWT president for suppliers, products and technology Andrew Winterton told The Beatthat the desktop product is "built and working in production on two global distribution systems, and will be moving over the next 12 months to the third. It drives a huge amount of consistency and process value in how we're working on our agent-fronted channel."
Winterton said the tool builds on an existing "U.S.-focused" product--also under the Symphonie brand--but Symphonie Express now is being used in "more than one market." He declined to say how many agents were using the new interface, but did say "it's quite a large number. I would think we'll release some information about that shortly."
A wave of new agent desktops is hitting the market from the likes of Amadeus, Datalex, Farelogix, Sabre and Travelport. These are only the most recent of many attempts during the past few decades to get travel agents off their key-command screensand into a point-and-click desktop environment. Although some agents complain that they are clunky, mouse-controlled, graphical screens offer benefits of richer information displays, integrated content from outside the GDS, merchandising, policy-based messaging, display customization and other features.
While Amadeus is developing such a product, at least for the U.S. market, Winterton said CWT is not using it. The TMC last week announced it signed a memorandum of understanding to potentially outsource "some of its mid- and back-office transaction technologies" to Amadeus, with which it also signed a "long-term" global distribution system deal. Due diligence is underway to transform the MOU into a full outsourcing agreement that would be "moving forward certainly by the summer," Winterton said.
Explaining the scope of the deal, Winterton said, "When we say mid-office to back-office, around the world lots of people read that in different ways, but basically it is everything behind the point of sale--the online booking tool or agent desktop--so we're looking at how do we manage quality control, financial reconciliation, general ledger … all those issues are under consideration and any products associated with them. They are very important business processes--like ARC reporting and ticketing solutions that we do--but at the same time, they're not necessarily providing a differential to the customer."
"We see innovations happening in the market and we want to integrate those, so we might buy, or might part buy and build, or we might build it ourselves," Winterton added. "We want to take a very pragmatic view in regards to creating value and making sure we make the right investment decisions."