CSFB, Trondent Develop Profile Tech

The travel team at Credit Suisse First Boston has been working for the past five years with Trondent to develop a GDS- and agency-agnostic ProFiler Web technology that has enabled CSFB and other travel managers to access, consolidate and track standardized, global traveler profile information through a single portal.

CSFB and Trondent first began to work together in early 2000 to address the need to synchronize the management of traveler profiles used by travel agencies, global distribution systems and internal corporate databases, a problem that for years has caused concern for travel managers overseeing globally unconsolidated programs.

"We had been doing profile work for CSFB for some time for the United States and the United Kingdom," said Theo Szymanski, director of sales for Barrington, Ill.-based tech development firm Trondent. "Then they approached us and said they wanted to expand that to other countries, but not all of them were on the same GDS or the same agency. From the agency side, we identified different locations globally that we wanted to consolidate, but they weren't collecting the same information in every country. To fully realize their goal of global profile management, the profiles had to be standard, user friendly and easily accessible to travelers."

Salvatore Sheusi, vice president of travel technology for CSFB, said consistency and ease of use were of paramount concern to the company's travel team. "It is all related to online booking and part of that process. If we identify something in the booking process that's preventing us from counting that into our first-pass yield, we'll find a way to address it," Sheusi said, noting that the company currently maintains 33 percent first-pass yield, or touchless booking rate. Since the profile management system is Web-based, standard and accessible from any region, he added, "It puts the onus on the traveler to create, maintain and update their own profiles."

At the same time, Sheusi noted that a global, online profile management tool with a single point of access has allowed the company to eliminate redundant traveler profiles.

"Travelers only have to go to one place to update their individual profiles, agents have access, we import HR feeds once a month to ensure accuracy, and we can give profile feeds back on a request basis." By standardizing the information collected in the profile database across the 12 countries using the tool, Sheusi said that the company, for the first time, has true corporate consistency of employee data, enhancing CSFB's security reporting and traveler tracking capabilities.

"What really happens is, every time a traveler makes a booking, their profile exchanges all the necessary information with the online booking tool or the agency, as well as the GDS," said Sheusi. "We made sure that profile information, such as emergency contact information, passes through into the booking."

CSFB first began using a version of the solution they devised with Trondent in November 2000, and has continued to enhance the product ever since.

With 40 companies of varied sizes and travel needs now using the tool, said Trondent's Szymanski, its flexibility is fundamental to its functionality. "If companies in particular countries were to change their agencies or online booking tools, it's very easy for us to switch over the synchronization," he said. "It also synchronizes to any GDS or non-GDS system, and it's fully customizable so that the look and feel of the site is full in line with the customer's design specifications. If data requirements change, we can change it in the system, all at once, on a global basis."

Since developing ProFiler Web's global capabilities with CSFB, Trondent has expanded and enhanced it with its soon-to-be released ProFiler Web Master, which allows users with little or no Web-programming knowledge to configure custom profile sites on their agency or client Web sites. "This tool would give a totally non-technical travel manager or agent the ability to go in and change something on the site if he wanted to, such as modifying the drop-down menu to include another business division," Szymanski said.

While travel management companies and online booking systems offer technologies to handle such data consolidation, third-party providers may be wise to address this particular market niche, said Norm Rose, president of Travel Tech Consulting. "The need for an independent profile off the GDS that maybe feeds different GDSs is an important infrastructure component of any global program," he said. "Of course, it's easier done if you have a single TMC, but there's a big fallacy about global travel management. There are very few companies out there that actually have a single global agency."

Multi-sourced profile management holds the potential for significant development. "A profile, by definition, points to preferences," Rose said. "It has two functions, an accounting function and the other side of it is actually tracking your preferences, which has pretty much been limited to whether you want an aisle seat or a window seat, or a non-smoking hotel room. There's a lot more that can be done in this area and Trondent is very smart for getting into this business."

"What we're describing here is a band-aid to a bad technology," Rose said. "The way profiles are being handled in the GDS is kind of an evolved use of something that was not intended. Now we have relational databases. Trondent has tried to overcome the fact that the GDSs and the TMCs have their own standards for collecting data, but it's all just a big band-aid."