Bayer Travel Pieces Fall Into Place

<B> Bayer Travel Pieces Fall Into Place</B>

By Mary Ann McNulty

<I>Pittsburgh</I> - Just as the pieces of the end-to-end travel system he's been building at Bayer Corp. for the past three years begin to fit together, travel manager M. John Guarneri has left to solve a new puzzle at Arco Corp. of Plano, Texas.

"I feel like the father who just gave birth, but won't be able to see the child walk," Guarneri said, as he showed BTN how the pieces of his automated travel solution will work under the stewardship of Paul Lang and two other colleagues who have taken over travel, corporate card and meeting management.

The focal point of the Bayer system is the travel site on the corporate intranet, from which employees can find everything they need to know about the travel program. And Guarneri means everything--from booking and expense reporting to policy and preferred vendors, maps and driving directions to Bayer plants and offices, locations of its card provider's automated teller machines, complaint forms, details on luggage insurance, details on amenities of each of its preferred hotels, travel and safety tips, including access to Kroll Associates' database. Some areas--such as policy and security issues--are owned by departments other than travel, Guarneri noted. But the travel site seamlessly integrates all information.

Bookings are processed through Sabre's Business Travel Solutions, as configured by BTI Americas, Bayer's primary agency. Although Bayer enabled booking capability at the first of the year, Guarneri waited for the enhancements--and bug fixes--in the latest release of the software before beginning widespread marketing of this technology.

Even so, more than 150 travelers have found the site and asked for passwords, booking 10-15 reservations a week through the system, Guarneri said.

Testing the software extensively at three locations, Guarneri acknowledged that Bayer's technology team found some problems. Before deploying the booking system throughout the company, Guarneri felt, it had to be perfect or risk turning travelers against it permanently.

"Now, I'm satisfied that it is," he said.

As part of the test, Guarneri found that he had to carefully balance policy with full disclosure of fare options in BTS. "I have to make the information available, but can't make it too restrictive," so as to dissuade travelers from booking online, he noted. Once the system alienates a traveler, getting them to return is an uphill battle.

To satisfy security concerns, Bayer has a dedicated line to Sabre over which all booking data travels. Piggybacking on that line is expense data to and from Bayer's automated expense reporting vendor, Value Integrated Network.

Bayer pioneered the VIN.net automated expense reporting solution in 1996 (<I>BTN,</I> April 8, 1996). The next steps will be to deploy Vin.net throughout the company and feed the reservation data into the expense software to prepopulate expense reports with the itinerary information.

Various entities in Bayer have been testing direct feeds of credit card data into Vin.net. Some want to reimburse GE MasterCard directly for all charges of their employee group; others want to reimburse employees. At some point, Bayer might begin charging units that request reimbursement via check, Guarneri said.

Reporting is the only area of end-to-end on which Bayer's travel department hasn't decided. The company can use BTI's Portico, BTS' VantagePoint or even store the data on its own mainframe computers and use other software to access it. A decision is expected soon.

Strategizing ways to develop a site without financing it, Guarneri said, he met with information systems as soon as they began working on the corporate intranet. He told IS that if they could develop a travel site at no cost, he would do everything possible to entice travelers to use the new technology. "They'll come to travel, but I'm not going to pay for it," Guarneri told IS.

The tactic worked. Since it launched in early 1997, the travel home page consistently has ranked among the top 15 most frequently visited sites within the corporation, after the phone book and job listings. Since January, the travel page was accessed more than 25,000 times.

At Bayer's corporate home page, employees can access travel, human resources, information technology, accounting, quality, communications, engineering and other units within the vast global organization. Employees based at Bayer's German headquarters can access the site, but won't be able to book tickets, as their travel is managed separately from that in the U.S.

Once on the travel site, employees see a road map with policy, travel reservations, hotel directory, corporate card, car rental, airlines, travel tips and destination news.

Although the travel home page uses a lot of graphics, the majority of Bayer's travel site is text. However, to help employees find what they're looking for quickly, the site offers a scrollable index on the left side of the screen, with the topic appearing on the rest of the screen.

Loading the hotel directory onto the site has allowed Bayer to reduce printing costs. In 1997, the department printed 10,000 copies of the directory to travelers. This year, it printed 4,000 and told travelers to e-mail the department if they wanted one.

Guarneri expects his colleagues will add maps to the online hotel offering, in addition to the text-based location listing and directions from the airport and corporate office, later this year.

From the site, travelers can fill out any form they need, update their travel agency profile or secure a corporate card. The card form includes required entry fields, and the system details what employees must complete to process the form.

Employees also can look up the names of card administrators at dozens of locations who must process the printed and signed card applications.

They also can learn the details of Bayer's negotiated airline deals and its car rental rates. A warning on the first page of the travel site reminds travelers that all information is considered "company private," which in Bayer parlance means it's to be treated as confidential.

Working with airline vendors, Guarneri garnered permission to post their weekly pricing specials on his site.

"Not everyone has access to the Internet," Guarneri said. "Besides, I want to put things on my site, so they'll come here for it. I want them here." That's why the travel department frequently updates the site, adds travel tips and includes news briefs on breaking developments, such as boarding pass or baggage rule changes.

Looking back on his efforts to piece together an end-to-end solution, Guarneri said Bayer was "definitely on the bleeding edge when we began looking at this three years ago."

Working with vendors as they fully developed the products has enabled Guarneri to ensure that all his needs are met and to negotiate much better deals than are standard in the marketplace today. But if anyone believes these systems are turnkey, Guarneri said, they're kidding themselves. Just working through the policy manager of both booking and expense reporting systems for Bayer's 13,000 travelers took an enormous amount of time.

Guarneri was seeking a way "to deal with the growth" of Bayer's travel volume, which reached $60 million in U.S.-booked air volume in 1997, as well as pave the way for the company's younger employees to use the technology they're so comfortable with to book travel.

Deciding on a booking system last year, Bayer evaluated three systems, Sabre BTS, E-Travel and Internet Travel Network.

"Personally, I would hope to book 60 percent to 70 percent of our travel over this by the end of next year," Guarneri said. "A lot of our travel is between sites. If we can do this, we can reduce calls to BTI and therefore reduce our transaction costs."

Currently, Bayer is tracking 3.5 calls to BTI per reservation. "If you can find out the schedule, book it yourself and set it up for e-ticketing, we've reduced the costs."

Guarneri believes that as Bayer moves to more net-net airline ticket pricing, it should charge for travel services, adding $20 onto the ticket of those who book online and $50 onto those who insist on using the phone. "That would be my philosophy. I'll give them the tools to do the job," he said.

But that piece of the puzzle will be left for someone else to solve.