Hilton Sturisky, BCD Travel (5Q Interview)

Hilton Sturisky, BCD Travel senior vice president of information and communication technology, recently spoke with Management.travelabout IT innovation within managed corporate travel and BCD's ongoing technology projects. "Innovation is something that enables us as a company to do something differently by really thinking through the process and taking a step away from traditional thinking and allowing us to do something in a new, unique and creative way," Sturisky said. "Innovation isn't necessarily something that ends up touching tens of thousands of customers and making a big splash. But innovation can be taking an internal code, for example, and completely rewriting how it's done. Perhaps it allows us to do something tomorrow that we haven't thought that we wanted to do tomorrow." He added that BCD's IT team has "evolved to get current with the changing cycles of the travel industry. As the travel industry has evolved and expanded, technology has taken an increasingly critical role." Additional excerpts follow.

Lately, what have you been working on most?

We've got various projects in the works. One of the big things that is apropos to some of this is our security-related activities. We have a tremendous amount of work that we do in the world of security. Security is a journey. But we are very much focused on the certifications that our customers expect of us, such as PCI [data security standards] and ISO/IEC 27001 [management controls over information systems]. That's definitely something that is well underway. We also are very heavily pursuing our telephony deployments and rollouts of new telephony products. We also have a reporting platform that we have migrated and are rolling out. The thing that doesn't get a lot of play is the work we do behind the scenes to improve productivity and streamline processes that enable us, as an IT organization, to respond to our internal and external customers more appropriately and with more flexibility. There is a lot of what we call "productivity/innovation" internal improvements that the teams are heavily engaged in to prepare us for the economy turning and transactions increasing. We are using this as an opportunity to continue the work we've done in taking out costs and streamlining our organization.

Can you describe the initiatives with the telephony products?

It's been a couple of years in the making. We are replacing our legacy analogue phone systems with a new global solution that will enhance call routing, to be able to provide our callers a better user experience, so we are better able to route the calls to the appropriate desk and help them maintain their policy compliance in a more streamlined way. It also includes agent desktop screen pops, so that when the caller calls in, we have better information on them that is relevant. We started the rollout in Europe and the United States. We are continuing the deployments.

How do you collaborate with [BCD senior vice president of strategic marketing and technology planning] April Bridgemanand [BCD Travel director of emerging technologies] Miriam Moscovici on social media, mobile and other technologies?

We are very close. April's organization and my organization feed off each other, and April helps define our direction and strategy. She, in a sense, is one of our key internal customers. My job is to make sure I'm supporting her in the right manner. We are building an organization, data elements and processes that can be flexible so that we can very quickly and seamlessly leverage those new third-party innovations that are coming out at such a rapid pace. My team on the technical side is supporting both [the TripIt implementationand the Amadeus One platform]. We were the ones that developed the TripIt feeds and are now working with April and appropriate internal stakeholders on the Amadeus One component.

What is your philosophy on how you make the decision to build technology internally or buy something that has been built by a different technology organization?

My philosophy has changed. Technology at BCD is here to support the business, and one of the key behaviors that I embed in our organization is humility. We don't always have all the answers but we know how to go out and get the right answer for the organization based on what is needed at that point in time. It really comes down to what we are trying to do: Do we want it as a core competency for the organization or, quite frankly, are we better off purchasing from a third party and either have them host that solution for us or us deploy their solution internally. We don't have any hard and fast rules that say we should or should not buy versus build. Well, we do have one hard and fast rule but it's not as much about the technology or the process, it's really about the end result--are we giving the customer the best piece of technology or product improvement at the right time for the right price point? So, we do a little of both but we find that for some of the core travel-related competencies, we may be better off building ourselves components of that and then outsourcing the more generic, integratable third-party components.

There's the struggle of, yes, we can buy it, but so can everyone else, so how much of a competitive advantage are you offering, and are you bringing your clients something that others don't. Of course, to build it internally and have it very customized brings cost. It's a tough decision. Has there been a shift in recent years in terms of asking that question, that it's more one way versus the other?

The question is asked a lot and it's part of our normal process now that when we do get projects approved, we decide if we are going to build it versus buy it. It's hard to compare this to what the industry metrics would be, but we have a very good ability to deliver on our commitments internally. So, when we go down the path of accepting an internal project to build, we pretty much know that we will be able to deliver it and provide the value with the appropriate transparency that is required. If we think we won't be able to do that because we have other higher-priority items, or it's not an area we want to get into, then it makes sense to buy it. I don't know that the trend has changed in terms of buying or building more, there's just a greater level of comfort around these decisions as an organization. We're not swayed one way or the other, aside from the value that this provides the customer.