Cos. Reveal Intranet Secrets

<B> Cos. Reveal Intranet Secrets</B>

By Mary Ann McNulty


<I>Washington</I> - What makes a great corporate travel intranet? A combination of content, graphics, easy navigation and a thorough understanding of the corporate culture, said travel managers from four major companies at the Association of Corporate Travel Executives' annual meeting here last month.

Assembling travel management executives from diverse companies, moderator Dan Geller, president of WizBizWeb LLC of San Francisco, said corporate travel intranets can help companies reduce travel administration costs, which American Express estimated to be 10 to 30 percent of total travel and entertainment spend.

All travel management functions can be improved through automation or moving them to the intranet site, Geller said. In purchasing, companies can use interactive requests for proposals and update preferred vendors online; in analysis, they can review usage and exception reports on the intranet or combine travel and other data for knowledge management, he said.

Steven Schoen of The Coca-Cola Co. in Atlanta, Jeff Kurn of Hewlett-Packard Co. in Palo Alto, Calif., Katey Flanagan of Oracle Corp. in Redwood Shores, Calif., and Zack Hicks of Toyota Motor Sales, Torrance, Calif., showed portions of their travel sites and detailed how they added Webmaster skills to their already heavy workload. All emphasized the importance of remembering the traveler in designing the navigation and content.

When Coca-Cola's corporate services area--including travel--decided to establish an intranet, executives spent much time "developing three key concepts: content or data, structure or the feel, and the style or look of the site," said Schoen, global travel manager.

The mission of the site is to provide global Coca-Cola intranet users with knowledge about all travel-related information and services, and direct access to applications that support its policies, procedures and services.

"The easy part was figuring out what we wanted to do," he said. However, it took a while to get the site up and running as the development was in addition to all other tasks for both travel and the information systems departments.

This month, the site added a self-booking tool, interactive traveler profile and feedback button that creates an e-mail form. A global hotel directory lists cities, then preferred properties. Among the property information displayed is the name, location, cancellation policy, rates and remote computing capabilities in-room.

Undergoing its last major overhaul in April, Hewlett-Packard's travel Web site is being accessed more than 10,000 times a month, is available to more than 125,000 employees worldwide and encompasses more than 1,000 pages. Usage is expected to surge in coming months as booking capabilities are added to the site, said Kurn, corporate travel supplier manager.

Also developed with internal programming and content resources, the site is helping the travel team reduce the number of phone calls for routine issues, such as forms for the corporate card and preferred renter programs of its car vendors, travel policy, hotel guide including mapping, and travel questions and answers. Signing up for the corporate card on the Web site, employees e-mail the form to American Express now, Kurn said, with no paper required.

Among the options that H-P travelers now can jump to are: air, corporate card, forms, global travel, health & safety, hotels, H-P information, maps, meetings, newsletters, policy, rental cards, reservations, specials, feedback and search. In the hotel section, H-P has stripped data off the NBTA/ACTE electronic hotel RFP responses for its preferred properties.

Further enhancements to the site will be the launch of a new online booking system, Internet Travel Network, interactive profile change forms and better maps that show both hotels and H-P locations on the same map instead of separately as they are today.

Charged with designing Oracle's site, travel department project manager of technology solutions Katey Flanagan said she took some basic HTML courses, taught herself FrontPage 98, worked with one of the company's Webmasters and surfed the Net for ideas. Offering practical tips on site navigation and loading, Flanagan said the point is "less is more. Don't be afraid to shorten your content," go full screen as much as possible and make sure pages take no more than 40 seconds to load.

Among the links on Oracle's travel site are: agency, airlines and fares, preferred suppliers, helpful sites, a VP corner listing policies for these executives, news, travel profiles and a remote dial-in option. Pull-down file folder tabs across the top of the travel home page also offer booking, policy, forms, hotel, car and credit card as options.

Carefully considering corporate culture at Toyota Motor Sales, travel services manager Hicks knew exactly what he wanted and hired a graphic artist to craft the cartoon-like travel town. Using a Web technology called Shockwave, elements of each page change slightly as users move a mouse down the street, over a car, hotel or other building. For example, the windows of a hotel--links to areas of the travel page--pop up as the mouse hits each.

Among the options on the page are a hotel directory, airport information, comments, group travel, leisure, luggage allowance rules, policies, preferred airlines, car rental companies, restaurants, travel tips, news, weather and meet the staff picture. In developing content for the site, Hicks said he asked regional offices for insight. The travel team also considered what new employees would need to know and designed a few pages just for them.