Amex Focused On Benchmarks, GDS Convergence, Desktop Rollout

American Express Business Travel is moving into the next phase of its drive to provide global consistency for transaction processes, services, reporting and internal measurement by leveraging its global data to provide buyers with robust benchmarking services for optimally efficient global travel programs.

In year three of the global service initiative, Amex has nearly completed the integration of consistent front-end technology, planned to integrate the global distribution systems in its portfolio, deployed its mid-office tool set—primarily consisting of TRX's Correx—and compiled back-office data about its $130 billion in T&E spending, according to Amex Business Travel COO Priyan Fernando.

While previous phases of the initiative focused on laying the infrastructure, integrating the right mix of manpower and technology, and training agents in consistent booking and customer service practices, Fernando said, now "it's about leveraging the information that we have of our clients globally to really add value to the customer in ways we did not think possible. We are now capturing a level of detail, so we are able to benchmark, provide service, share best practices around the world in markets that don't have them and bring some newer markets much faster into the level of sophistication that mature markets have."

The mega travel management company has made a significant investment in its global advisory services unit, which has more than 250 employees worldwide. The consulting division rolled out to Asia/Pacific last November and provides advisory services for elements of the travel process including policy recommendation, sourcing, process improvement and benchmarking.

"We are seeing today, more than ever, clients requesting global servicing. These include middle-market clients with small operations in the U.S. requiring a global TMC solution," he said.

As more transactions move online, Amex's work force has changed. "In the old model, most of the volume was offline and manual. Now, many of our clients are coming in with automated online transactions," Fernando said.

"We are getting volume, but the amount of labor required to service the volume is not as high as it was in the past. We are also seeing more and more transactions going online, which creates turn in the workforce. This is where our ability to move work from one center to another enables us to create stability, because we can redeploy our people in location X with work that is coming from location Y. The ability to network our volumes has enabled us to manage our volumes with minimum disruption."

This year, American Express put together plans to deploy a standard front-end agent desktop globally and to integrate content from Galileo, Sabre and Amadeus GDSs. Fernando said American Express is in the process of converging GDSs to bring more "alignment and logic" to its GDS relationships.

Amex still is implementing its Gateway agent desktop, which is near completion in the United States and next slated for rollout in Canada, he said.

With a consistent network established, customer levels measured on common metrics and scorecards have spiked.

"Three years later," Fernando said, "we are seeing common scorecards that enable different parts of the world to have healthy competition, because they are seeing things being measured across common metrics."