Agencies Recast Themselves As Technology Advisors

<B> Agencies Recast Themselves As Technology Advisors</B>

By Sarah Welt

The travel business, always mercurial, is in flux again.

With automated travel booking and expense reporting systems beginning to find a market this year, direct links looming on the horizon and fee-paying corporate customers demanding the service they now are cutting checks for, the agency community once again is redefining itself. As corporate customers increasingly look for expert technology solutions, the mega agencies and the super regionals are stepping into the role of technology consultants and system integrators.

BTI Americas, Northbrook, Ill., for example, in November reshaped its technology group, spinning off its nine-person technology team into an independent Information Technology Solutions unit from what used to be part of the agency's marketing group to provide customers with consulting services, training and ongoing support. "We've assigned a technology person to every sales person and relationship manager in our company," said Ellen Trotochaud, director of information technology solutions. BTI Americas also has invested in Sabre's Business Travel Solutions architecture, customizing it as Portico Travel Planning, and working to seamlessly integrate it with various expense vendors and BTI's Mantis technology platform.

When it comes to client implementation, BTI handles booking, but for expense reporting, Trotochaud said, both BTI and expense reporting vendors implement the product.

Like many agencies, BTI offers customers the flexibility of choosing their own technology modules, "Because every customer wants something different," Trotochaud said. "We haven't pushed one card program or one expense system. We partnered with BTS and have been working with them on providing all customers a solution, regardless of CRS."

For the Argonne National Labs account, for example, which wanted to stay on Apollo because of its United relationship, BTI developed an Apollo link for Sabre BTS (<I>BTN</I>, March 2).

American Express decided to go the development route for automated booking, partnering with Microsoft to create AXI, its proprietary system. Amex was working to create its own in-house expense reporting system, but scrapped that product in favor of partnering with Portable Software, taking a "best of breed" approach (<I>BTN</I>, Jan. 12).

Ed Gilligan, president of corporate services, Amex Travel Related Services, said the interest in automated systems and the move to the Internet have been huge drivers of change for the nation's largest corporate agency. "It's easy to predict that clients are going to need more help to sort through all the technology to improve their processes and to lower their costs," he said. The agency's role in offering client solutions "is an integral part, but not the only part, of what we do. We also offer consulting on the front end, on how to manage travel and other expense areas. And we offer travel transaction processing, MIS solutions, billing solutions, negotiations support and global customer service."

Maritz Travel, Fenton, Mo., also has been involved in development, as well as partnering with technology vendors to provide client solutions. The company said it plays a role in consulting with corporations about which products are the right fit. It currently has 12 clients working with five different automated booking technologies.

For the mid-office function, Maritz decided that the existing tools in the marketplace did not measure up--and made a $5 million investment in developing its own global reporting tool, Northstar. Four corporate clients are using the Northstar system--Whirlpool Corp. and Novell Inc. began using it in July; Baxter Health Care Corp. began in January, and Georgia-Pacific Corp. started using the product this month. Maritz is testing a Web version of Northstar. The agency also signed five new customers, including a non-Maritz client, who will adopt the system within the next six months.

Maritz president and CEO Michael Boland said that in the current technology-driven environment, "clients hire us as consultants." While the consulting team consists of "a handful of people," Boland said he hopes to "bill out $1 million in consulting next year."

Boland noted that there seems to be "a gap between the shrink-wrap delivery of a product versus the hands-on use of a product." Maritz can provide not only integration but also on-going support and training. The company has a separate division whose business is providing computer-based training for Fortune 500 companies.

As travel management moves into the millennium, Boland said buyers may use Maritz only for select processes. "As things evolve, we may only do the survey before a product is installed, or clients may pay us to do research." Boland's goal is to be a broad provider of services.

While that may one day include direct links, to date, "We haven't done them because many suppliers think the current distribution channel is priced right," said Richard Spradling, Maritz's corporate vice president of information technology.

Philadelphia-based mega agency Rosenbluth International has long marketed itself on being a leader in information technology, though its new strategy this year focuses away from individual products in favor of emphasizing the company brand.

Getting Smart Systems

This year it is spending a good portion of its budget on developing neural networks (<I>BTN</I>, Oct. 14, 1996), or learning-based systems, with a technology partner. Chief travel scientist Danamichele O'Brien said travel managers want smart systems that learn from patterns. While neural network technology has been around for a decade, O'Brien said, only now is it getting to be a class of software that provides tangible benefits for travel managers.

The super regionals, too, are getting into the technology consulting business. Mt. Laurel, N.J.-based Travel One, for example, started evaluating speech recognition and desktop booking systems before they were even on the market. In addition, said vice president of business systems Allan Brown, the company looked at all the major players and held focus groups with customers before deciding to distribute the E-Travel system a year and a half ago. With E-Travel, "We are essentially acting as a reseller," Brown said. "But we are a value-added reseller because they are benefiting from our implementation and support services, and the fact that we are integrating it with our travel operations."

For expense reporting, Travel One currently offers clients its proprietary product, Expense One, but is seeking other partnerships. Today, less than 5 percent of clients are using Expense One.

As for direct connections to travel providers, "There is a lot of interest in it but at this point it is just interest. I think over time there is an opportunity to do some of that," Brown said. Even with direct links, he noted, the agency still will play a role. "Clients are still going to want it to come back to us for quality control; they are still going to want the ability to pick up a phone at the airport and call and have an agent be able to see and change that reservation."

Travel and Transport in Omaha, meanwhile, has designated a special task force to analyze technology products, and given presentations on the various systems to clients over the past few years, said president and CEO Bill Tech. "We think our role is to do the research and present our clients with a technology suite. We actually have about ten vendors in the same large conference room giving demonstrations.