CWTSatoTravel and Northrop Grumman Corp. will phase out Northrop's GovTrip online travel tool and ramp up CWTSatoTravel's E2 Solutions if they win their bid to power the General Services Administration's e-Gov Travel Service 2.0 program. Northrop will serve as a subcontractor to CWTSatoTravel, which indicated Concur is its only known rival bidder.
CWTSatoTravel and Northrop, along with Hewlett-Packard, hold separate contracts for the original iteration of ETS. "ETS1 is a stand-alone and all three parties will continue to provide services for that master contract," said Daniel Gildea, GovTrip program manager for Northrop, in a recent interview with BTN. "The difference that is going to exist is that in ETS1, Northrop operates the GovTrip system as a stand-alone integration platform that federal government agency customers use for their end-to-end travel services. In ETS2, Northrop Grumman will be supporting CWTSatoTravel with their system--the E2 Solutions tool."
Under ETS1, Northrop provides the "technology and the overall expertise and management, and we provide travel services fulfillment," explained Marc Stec, CWTSatoTravel vice president of global program management. "GovTrip as a system will no longer be in operation" in ETS2.
According to a statement, Northrop will join GDSX, Sabre's GetThere, RightNow Technologies and ImageTag as subcontractors. However, CWTSatoTravel will rely especially on Northrop because of its "expertise in systems integration and their overall expertise in ETS1," Stec noted.
According to Stec, CWTSatoTravel's subcontractors in ETS1 provide single capabilities: GetThere is the online booking engine, GDSX is an interface application, RightNow is a customer service application and ImageTag is used to scan receipts.
"We thought taking the best of what we both had to offer and combining both of our expertise in terms of our technology and resources seems to be a very good match," Stec said of the Northrop partnership.
"Some of the most complex integrations with the travel systems involve those financial systems that the agencies all operate," said Gildea. "Each one is largely unique, and what we bring to the partnership is a solid understanding of how those interfaces were developed, how they were needed to be operationalized, how they need to support the volume and the complexity of the financial systems. We built enhancements to support 70 percent of the federal agencies. That is a very strong point and part of the reason that brought us together."
Unlike the separate contracts for ETS1, GSA has indicated a preference for fewer awards. A massive solicitation covering more than 70 agencies, the ETS2 bid could result in a 15-year contract. ETS1 has 10-year contracts.
"There are only two bidders here that we know of," said Stec. "To our knowledge there is one other offer, Concur."
Concur would not comment on its bid, but the company previously expressed interest in biddingon the solicitation and is listed as an interested party on the FedBizOps.com website.
Following the solicitation's close last week, the parties will "go through the competitive process, and the government will make a decision as to how many awards they will make," Stec said. Assuming a master contract is awarded, "we should fare well in getting an award. Then we have to compete if there is more than one bidder on each of the task orders awarded by each of the federal agencies when they seek to move to ETS2.
"When the agencies first implemented ETS1, there was a lot of up-front integration cost for financial systems, personnel systems and taking the data from the respective GovTrip and E2 Solutions," Stec argued. GSA "will have to undergo [that process] in transitioning to any new system if there is a new vendor. We can minimize that cost to the federal agencies, with just an easier transition for them. It's less costly for them than switching to a totally new system."
For CWTSatoTravel, "the biggest challenge would be what budgets the federal agencies will have in order to move forward with ETS2," he added.
The article originally was published in Business Travel News.