This past February, just one year into a six-year contract
with Orbitz for Business, IBM was implementing at full speed; IBM employees in 45
countries already were using the booking tools. Shari Quackenbush, IBM global
agency and online lead, had slated 15 more countries for implementation by the
end of 2015 and had 30 more on the docket. That's when Egencia announced its
proposed acquisition of Orbitz For Business. Though the tie-up was still subject
to U.S. Department of Justice antitrust approval, the wheels were turning for
Quackenbush.
“We were concerned about what that would mean for us,” she
said, despite the perceived comfort from the fact that IBM was OFB’s largest
customer and one of the biggest business
travel spenders in the United States. “We expected when the deal went down
that … we could go into that [situation] in a leadership position.” After all,
she said, “we are the biggest. If they wanted to keep us, they would keep us on
what we wanted to be on for a period of time.”
Egencia’s leadership did not share that perspective,
informing OFB clients in November that they would be transitioned to Egencia’s
tools and services. That did not affect IBM, however, because the company already
had decided to transition to Concur, Quackenbush said. “The timing was
interesting because the decision was made independently of the Orbitz
[acquisition],” she said, “but it was not a problem [IBM's travel team had] with
Orbitz that sent us in a different direction. Our team was going full-speed
ahead on the Orbitz implementation.” Rather, said Quackenbush, the company's leadership
led the move, involving the travel team late in the process. “I wouldn’t say
the decision had been made [already to move travel to Concur], but there was a
good likelihood.”
IBM GERS-Concur Expense
Deal Drove Decision
IBM announced in 2014 that it would stop operating its
Global Expense Reporting Solution as a stand-alone product on March 31, 2016,
and referred its clients to Concur, which SAP acquired later that year. IBM
itself also will move to the Concur expense solution. “It’s the typical way
with programs,” said Quackenbush. “They lead with the expense solution and then
allow the travel commitment to follow, but we have a pretty strong relationship
with SAP so it made sense all the way around.”
Egencia was not able to match the robust solution for IBM’s vast
travel program, according to Quackenbush. “We’re not the Egencia model, and
we’ll never go to that model,” she said, adding IBM could have considered Egencia’s
Traveldoo, but it couldn't serve 90 markets around the world. The challenge for
IBM now, though, is to unwind the half-implemented OFB program. “We have to
rethink our strategies and reposition ourselves in the short term,” Quackenbush
said, “but we are clear in the long term about where we are headed.”
Extra Care For The Cutover
Quackenbush conceded that IBM gains much from combining
travel and expense under Concur. With American Express Global Business Travel as IBM’s travel
management company, the implementation will follow a well-worn path even for a
large, global program. Plus, all is not lost from the OFB rollout, she said.
“Putting out a booking tool is not a two-way street. It involves three parties.
American Express GBT had to do a lot of work [for the OFB implementation] that we
can transition to the Concur implementation.”
But it has to be more than a booking tool this time around,
said Quackenbush, who admitted that she faces a two-year simultaneous rollout
for travel and expense tools while Egencia will support the Orbitz tools for only
a single year.
Since IBM was already serious about cutting over to Concur
before the Egencia-Orbitz marriage cleared the antitrust process, there was a
plan in place. “But we were going to implement differently; we thought we would
have more time,” said Quackenbush. Nevertheless, “the only way to switch is to
come out with something more complete; otherwise you end up confusing
everyone.”
It’s a tricky undertaking that requires rolling certain
markets back onto IBM’s previous Online Travel Reservations site for a limited time.
This site is built on Travelport’s Traversa technology, and Travelport has
committed to maintaining that tool as needed for IBM. Yet some countries never
had the OTR tools, so they will be first in line for Concur implementation lest
they end up without any travel tools at all.
“We have eight countries in Africa where Concur really is
[the only potential provider], but we have IBMers in Kenya that are typically
using their phones to book on Orbitz,” said Quackenbush. “So we have to be
careful about how we approach this.”
Concur Is Just Part
Of The Strategy
Quackenbush is looking way beyond the core cutover to Concur,
to a longer-term vision for supporting the business journey. “The actual
booking tool is just small piece of it,” she said. “Where we are headed with
corporate booking is beyond type: It’s mobile. It’s end to end. We’ll take
advantage of Concur Mobile, but it will be part of the strategy, not the whole
strategy.”
Quackenbush said Concur has many of the pieces IBM would
want but IBM is not focusing on individual apps. “It’s going to be a strategic
interaction with travelers,” she said. “We will look at travelers along the
journey and start to plug in pieces at specific places along that journey, whether
that piece is from Concur or another partner, whether it’s ours or owned by a
supplier. I can’t say at the moment. There is a lot of conversation happening
right now.”