As it prepares to roll out a tech-enabled point-of-sale preferencing tool, Rapid Preferencing Manager, American Express is upping the ante in the high stakes pursuit of corporate clients.
Amex's tool and similar services at competing agencies highlight the necessary interaction between corporate clients and their agencies in efforts to meet objectives of multiple, overlapping airline contracts. These services blend automation and human intervention—balanced differently at each mega agency—to track changing market conditions and corporate client booking activity, pinpointing when and where preferences should be updated.
Amex is on track to begin beta testing the DealPower suite of products and services, including Rapid Preferencing Manager, this fall with five corporate clients. The agency said KPMG earlier this year began initial beta testing of RPM only. A full DealPower deployment is expected late first quarter or early second quarter of next year.
RPM dynamically alters point-of-sale instructions given to travel counselors through the Enhanced Supplier Preferencing tool already in use. That, Amex said, differs from competing tools that change preferences only after hurdles are reached. "You should not give one more extra passenger than necessary, in terms of market share, to maximize all airline deals," said Andy McGraw, vice president of sales for American Express Corporate Travel.
"Rosenbluth International does not update in real time. They manually check sales versus a given hurdle," said Jay Saoud, Amex director of new business development, referring to the competing agency's Dacoda product. "When you do it manually, you miss a heck of a lot, and if you wait until you hit the goals, your options moving forward are limited."
Rosenbluth, however, said Dacoda—Discount Analysis Containing Optimal Decision Algorithms—looks as far as eight weeks in advance, and based on numerous factors that could shift market share, generates suggested point-of-sale shifts through Rapid, its point-of-sale preferencing interface. But the agency relies on its own analysts to watch client activity. "The stats don't always make sense, so you don't want a machine setting what happens at the point of sale," said Ron DiLeo, Rosenbluth senior vice president of North America. "You have to give the buyer that last right of refusal."
San Diego-based Gateway Inc., a Rosenbluth client and Dacoda user, meets monthly with Dacoda analysts to discuss point-of-sale adjustments. "They are healthy discussions, but the bottom line is that the customer always makes the decisions. However, having a team of analysts gives diversity for working with corporations that may not have someone internally focused on travel management," said Doreen Baca, Gateway director of corporate travel services. "We have been with Rosenbluth for four years but did not always have Dacoda in place. When we did put it in place, we saw a huge difference." That difference, Baca said, has made up for the monthly fee "50 times over." She added that airlines, after realizing Gateway is a Dacoda user, "tell us that our data is better than theirs."
Carlson Wagonlit Travel also said the client should authorize all changes to point-of-sale preferences. "We won't just make a change without a member of the client's procurement or travel management team knowing what is happening," said Steve Shook, vice president of strategic sourcing. "But we like to be proactive. If we see a trend, behavior or policy change that we think will lead to the client falling short of a goal, we will discuss it and try to be way out in front. Many times, it is just a matter of city pair traffic changing."
The process, however, requires account managers to fill out a form and flow changes into the back-office database. Those changes then are reflected in the Agent Expert Interface application at the point of sale—part of the integrated CWT Symphonie model (BTN, Oct. 8)—which highlights and ranks a client's preferred carriers.
"Automation cannot handle everything and intervention needs to be a necessity on the part of the travel manager or the travel management team," said Bob Lichtman, partner in Incline Village, Nev.-based Corporate Solutions Group. He cited the following example: A goal on the primary preferred carrier is met and the system suggests a booking on a secondary carrier that may be quite a bit more expensive. The traveler, or the traveler's department, is left wondering why the higher fare was offered first. "That comes up very frequently," Lichtman explained. "And POS instructions cause frustration for many agents because they are compelled to make an offering they know the traveler won't accept."
Indeed, despite new automation, POS preferencing at American Express will not exist in a vacuum. Travel managers still view booking activity and have opportunities to make changes within RPM. "There is no human intervention required, but changes can be made manually if you need to do that," Amex's Saoud said. American Express, or travel managers using Excel spreadsheets, can execute those changes based on weekly reports.
Meanwhile, a vast majority of WorldTravel BTI's agent desktops have CRS Screen Highlighter, furnished by TRX Inc. An update of the product, which initially came to market 10 years ago, is expected by year-end and will provide support for additional operating systems and resolve some international GDS issues.
Screen Highlighter color-codes preferred airlines, but according to Steve Reynolds, TRX executive vice president and general manager, the trick is updating on a regular basis to move market share when necessary. "That should probably be done monthly, but in reality, it normally is done quarterly," he said. Once an agency and/or its corporate client determine which changes need to be made, the updates can be accomplished rather quickly. TRX's new InfoLink application then distributes via the Internet "the updated library of highlights to all agents that need it," Reynolds said.
Point-of-sale preferencing, no matter how it is accomplished, still must be integrated with online booking systems at many companies. "That is a challenge right now since the traveler is doing it themselves," Baca said. "We are working on a temporary solution, but that transparency must be solved."
Reynolds, however, cited direct control over online booking systems and the ability for corporations to tweak preferencing at any point. "We see better share shifts in the online world versus offline, sometimes a 20 percent to 25 percent improvement," he said.
Overall, TRX said seven of the top 10 travel agencies, and thousands of smaller ones around the globe, use Screen Highlighter. Radius, for example, distributes the product to all member agencies free of charge. Those agencies then sell advertising to travel suppliers in the form of pop-up ads at the point of sale. "They have found a phenomenal shift in market share when doing that, even in the corporate market," Reynolds noted. "In general, when there is not a clear corporate preference in the market, Screen Highlighter will default to an agency preference and work toward override agreements."