Amex Signs 100th AXI Customer, Speeds Rollouts

<B> Amex Signs 100th AXI Customer, Speeds Rollouts</B>

By Mary Ann McNulty

In one of the most graphic illustrations of Corporate America's quickening movement toward electronic commerce, American Express last week signed the 100th customer for its online booking system--and expects to triple that number by year-end.

Originally, Amex executives forecast having 200 customers on AXI by year-end, said Mike Mulligan, senior vice president and general manager of the American Express Interactive Group. AXI hit the market late last summer, one year after Amex and Microsoft announced the exclusive joint venture that created it. Just last November, only 20 customers were piloting AXI, Mulligan said.

Not only has corporate interest in the product intensified in recent months, but Amex executives have figured out how to halve the implementation process to get customers up and running on AXI in as little as four weeks. One customer was actually implemented in two weeks, said Yvonne Schneider, vice president of implementation and customer services in Houston, but she isn't promoting that pace.

In the implementations begun last fall, Amex detailed more than 150 steps to build each customized site, load policy parameters for all travelers and figure out how to issue passwords to all users. Typically, Amex's implementation team would spend a day discussing all issues, go off and build the customer's AXI site and return to modify it, Mulligan said.

Assessing this process, Schneider and Joe Froelich, director of implementations, looked for ways to reengineer and shorten the process. "One of the unique advantages we have as a travel company is that we know the policies of these companies. Now, we load all this up first. At the first meeting, we have everything built and ask the customers how they want to implement and show preferred carriers," Mulligan said.

One of the most difficult aspects of implementation, Schneider said, is actually automating the travel policy. By having the site built at the first meeting, agency executives can show travel managers the impact of their choices. For example, if the policy requires travelers to take the lowest fare in a two-hour window, AXI won't show the fare on flights that departs two hours and five minutes after the requested time. In AXI, the policy might need to offer a 2.25 or 2.5 hour window, Schneider said.

Now, Amex is able to implement AXI in four to eight weeks, Schneider said, instead of the 14 to 16 weeks it was taking last fall. A 150-page implementation binder also is available, covering virtually every question Amex has been asked by any customer, from security concerns to distributing passwords.

One issue has been how corporations can best enroll all travelers. Options include using human resource or card data feeds and doing it for them, or enticing them to visit the site and do it themselves.

To speed the implementation process, Schneider recommended that corporate decision makers review their policies and negotiated programs and consider how they want aspects implemented. In some instances, the implementation meeting was the first time both were reviewed in years, she said. At one company, she learned that the one-way fares negotiated were actually higher than roundtrip fares available in the market. The travel manager was advised to go back to the airline before programming AXI.

The first implementation meeting also has been shortened, and now typically runs several hours instead of several days. Besides customizing the AXI site with corporate policy, the Amex team and corporate executives draft a business plan for the implementation during this meeting. Schneider said she still prefers to run a pilot group of 50 to 500 participants for a week or so before rolling AXI out to the entire workforce.

"We like to limit a pilot to four weeks; we don't like them to go longer," Schneider said. "The software isn't what we're piloting, it's the environment" and corporate acceptance of automated booking.

To handle the growing customer load, Amex has hired a few more implementation managers, with the team now numbering 10.

Besides speeding implementations, Amex and Microsoft also are rolling out new versions of AXI every six months, with slight modifications even more frequently. In March, the company added a pre-trip approval feature that's been a big hit with government entities and contractors.

Among the features in the latest version, released earlier this month, are a gateway page that helps first-time users through the process; the option to have both a domestic and international policy for every traveler; an area for travel managers to post incentives for using the system; an icon that allows travelers to see a specific travel policy in the middle of the reservation process; the ability to make itinerary changes even after ticketing, until four hours prior to flight or car rental pick-up; and the option to request a car service or limo.

How many more corporations does Amex anticipate next year? "I hesitate to tell you, because it would seem perhaps ludicrous," Mulligan said. "We are aggressively going to implement throughout our client base.