BTI Debuts Card, Expense Tech
<B> BTI Debuts Card, Expense Tech</B>
By Amon Cohen
<I>London</I> - Business Travel International is set this week to unveil details of its first global corporate card and the relaunch of its Portico end-to-end automated travel system.
The worldwide travel management partnership also has revealed some of its plans for harnessing technology to improve expense control for its clients. These include further segmentation of its service offering into cheaper and more expensive options, refinement of its pre-trip reporting system and even developing a model to assess the value of making a business trip.
The card, called simply the BTI Corporate Card, will be a Visa offering issued by Company Barclaycard, a subsidiary of British Barclays Bank, which claims to be the largest card issuer in Europe.
The product will launch this week in the United Kingdom and then be rapidly rolled out to all other BTI territories. The first phase of the card's U.S. rollout is expected to be complete by the end of the second quarter.
Management information generated by the card will be available on hard copy, disk or e-mail. Price will depend upon the number of cards issued and the shape of the client's global expenditure.
BTI claims that clients will be able to consolidate information globally with the card, and that data will be integrated with information from BTI's own MIS using a tool called Analyser Plus. Bare transaction data of the type normally given by a card vendor will be enhanced considerably. For instance, whereas card statements normally give the date, airline and price of each ticket, BTI said Analyser Plus also will display the gateway, destination, flight number and class of ticket.
BTI also is relaunching its Portico system, which originally launched in 1996, as BTI Portico. This time, the agency plans to market it vigorously and consistently worldwide as part of its global branding strategy.
Meanwhile, consolidation of the ownership of BTI, principally by managing partner BTI Hogg Robinson, continues, although the U.S. operation remains a major stumbling block. Hogg has been aiming to buy BTI Americas for well over a year. Rumors in the United States suggest BTI Americas has been discussing a sale to American Express, though there is a distinct possibility that this is talk designed to push up the price to Hogg.
Behind the BTI Americas problem lies part-shareholder EDS, now anxious to extricate itself from an investment that ultimately proved to have little strategic value for the technology consulting company. However, the valuation that EDS places on BTI Americas is different from that placed on it by Hogg, and EDS is waiting for Hogg to come down to a price that will allow it to retreat with dignity.
Meanwhile, BTI Portico does contain a number of technological advances. Integration between the modules--which run from traveler self-service planning and reservations to MIS for the travel manager--has been tightened, and BTI claims the whole package is faster and more powerful, flexible and user-friendly.
It also is available online for the first time via the Internet or corporate intranets, including a real-time booking option. BTI has designed a series of pages for intranet versions, including information about BTI and the specific services it supplies to the client; corporate travel policy; and an information package, including destination data, exchange rates, timetables, maps and weather forecasts.
BTI Portico features pre-trip and post-trip data for travel managers--an area the company has worked hard on customizing for clients.
"There is one client for which we provide a hot-spot report," said technology director David Young. "If one of its travelers has booked a trip to a destination where trouble flares up, we contact the client's security department to let them know that person is going."
For another client with a very good route deal with KLM, he said, "our pre-trip information alerts us to anyone who is not using them, we let the travel manager know, and they have a quiet word."
BTI also is working on a consultancy product: developing a model that calculates whether a traveler's journey is ultimately likely to generate profit for the company. An example would be assessing the cost of a trip by a salesman, forecasting the likely sales to be generated by the visit and then calculating the operating profit.
"The question is how do we evaluate from past history which trips are necessary to advance the business and which are not?" said Young. "If we can find rules, then we can devise a system. Some of our most sophisticated corporate clients are talking to us about this and we are scratching our heads together looking at algorithms. But it could take three to four years."
BTI also is harnessing technology to improve the operational side of its business and experimenting with telephony. Calls requiring low-grade assistance, such as straightforward reservations and ticketing, will be channeled to lower paid agents, while more complicated consultations will be diverted to more experienced staff. Pricing for the services will be differentiated accordingly.
BTI is playing with logistical options for this theory. One is giving clients a central telephone number, from which the caller will be given further options. Another is simply giving callers different telephone numbers for different services. Self-service reservations for straightforward itineraries also is an option.