American Express, Concur and GetThere quietly but earnestly have been actualizing the idea that the cheapest trip is the trip not taken at all by implementing online booking technology that intervenes at the point of sale to convert a trip to a video-, Web- or audioconference.
American Express claimed it was first to market with the concept, as part of a broader "trip optimization" initiative. Soon after the November 2006 introduction of its American Express Intelligent Online Marketplace, powered by Rearden Commerce, Amex tested the waters for a new way to prevent trips by shifting prospective travelers to Microsoft Live Meeting or WebEx with just a few clicks of the mouse. The application includes a rules engine that allows clients to customize standards for a call to action between different types of employees.
As of Feb. 1, American Express had 928 clients using its Axiom online booking tool. Of those, about 100 were attempting to invoke the alternative use of a conferencing technology, based on individual goals and policies, the company said.
Jiten Bhalgat, practice leader of compliance and change management at American Express Advisory Services, said there is significant demand for the new approach to curbing travel and, hence, cutting costs. "The interest in procurement circles has increased during the past year and a half," according to Bhalgat, and "the interest is large."
GetThere last June introduced a dynamic messaging function for its booking engine that allows corporate clients to influence user behavior at the point of sale. The first GetThere client deployed it last fall specifically to convert trips to such alternatives as WebEx. Since then, an unspecified number of North American and European clients enabled the new capability with a similar motive. The company declined to discuss any additional details of its application, but suggested that by this summer it would introduce a next-generation demand management service that addresses trip avoidance as a strategic objective.
Concur in June will roll out the initial stage--a menu of service providers--of what it said will be the first truly comprehensive and fully integrated solution. An extension of Concur's Cliqbook booking engine and expense reporting platform will enable corporate clients to not only eliminate trips in lieu of an alternative, but also tabulate and report the savings accrued, said Tom DePasquale, Concur executive vice president and general manager.
Based on customer research, Concur will deliver a full range of more than a dozen popular options for video- , Web- and audioconferencing, as well as document sharing and management, and invitation management capabilities.
Concur invested $4 million in the new technology, which will be licensed under a software-as-service model so there will be nothing for corporate clients to install. The tech company will charge a transaction fee for booking the trip alternative, but no additional fees. Concur will not take any back-end commissions from third-party service providers.
DePasquale believes a reasonable benchmark for clients is the elimination of about 10 percent of their total number of trips.
BCD Travel senior vice president of technology solutions Ellen Trotochaud thinks Concur's offering is an important innovation. Compared with other booking tools, "Concur has a much more integrated approach because of the T&E [expense] integration," Trotochaud said, noting that almost half of BCD's Americas bookings are made with Cliqbook. "They have a lot more capability to define policy and push messaging out, based on their pretty robust rules engine. Other booking tools do, too, such as e-Travel, but Concur does that better than anybody."
[PULL_1]Trotochaud added that BCD in December began a formal initiative of its own to convert some internal travel to a new videoconferencing network. BCD's network currently links 12 key international cities, including Atlanta, Burbank, London and Singapore.
Still, Norm Rose, principal of Travel Tech Consulting, cautioned that many ideas hyped at the research and development stage ultimately have fallen flat with end users.
"I think this is a significant opportunity for companies to manage trips in a better fashion," Rose noted, "but the key to success will be how it is implemented: It comes down to how it is integrated into the flow of booking travel and whether it becomes a clear message about alternatives for those segments within the corporation for which this could be a realistic alternative."