Company: Dell Computer Corp.
Headquarters: Round Rock, Texas
2002 U.S. booked air volume: $40 million
For a company so closely aligned with technology, it stands to reason that Dell Computer Corp.'s travel management process is infused with Web-based innovations. The direct-sale computer vendor has been using Ebreviate—an Internet-based e-sourcing solution from A.T. Kearney—in almost all areas of direct and indirect procurement enterprisewide, with the travel department recently jumping onboard for travel-specific sourcing and negotiations.
Dell's travel group, which initially used the solution for hotel contracts
(BTN, June 3, 2002), currently is employing Ebreviate to replace its Sabre Business Travel Solutions online booking system. The company plans to have a new booking tool rolled out by year-end.
"Basically, you can put the whole process through an electronic format," said Mark Miller, Dell procurement program manager. "We sent out requests for information that way, and we got responses that way. We will also send the requests for proposals that way and then vendors will respond to that."
While the company has reported success with Sabre's BTS booking tool—garnering between 60 percent and 70 percent adoption—Dell is returning to the Internet to procure the next solution since Sabre is moving clients to a new platform
(see story)."Sabre BTS being sunset is really what spurred the course of the change," Miller said. "We're also looking globally, whereas before we only worked domestically."
Whether the company will put in place a consolidated booking tool worldwide or take the best-of-breed approach for each country or region will depend on the response to the RFIs. While Miller said that Dell puts price at the top of the list for booking tool criteria, the company also is seeking a tool that can be compatible with and preferably independent of any of the GDSs.
"We don't make every decision at Dell purely on price, but it certainly weighs heavily," Miller said. "We look at features as a total or a whole and not just one or two features would make or break it."
"We're part of worldwide procurement, and one of our key initiatives is to drive as much sourcing activity as possible through e-negotiations," added Dan Meier, director of global travel. "We did about a dozen or so of our key cities in Internet negotiations for hotels, and we'll be doing more of that in the future.
"Another one of Dell's key corporate initiatives is globalization," Meier continued. "We see foreign markets as having a big growth potential for sales, and we're moving customer support services to places like India and some of our manufacturing to places like China, so our business is becoming more global and having a single global agency falls right in line with that initiative."
As such, Dell is putting the finishing touches on moving its agency to a multinational level. Last June, Dell switched its agency from TQ3 Travel Solutions to WorldTravel BTI and began moving the new agency to multinational locales. Within three months, 32 countries had been moved to the new agency.
Thus far, 40 countries have been brought into the fold. Although some stragglers, such as France, only recently have been brought into the WorldTravel fold, it is only the smaller countries and Dell's isolated locales that continue to await implementation. However, Dell currently is not placing a high priority on getting areas that support a limited number of travelers up and running with the agency.
"There are some smaller locations where there might be a few travelers," Meier said. "Forty countries have WorldTravel BTI and if there is anything outside the program, we're working to get it in, but it's so nominal that it's not even worth some of the effort."
While the travel agency is officially in place, there remains much more work in the way of globalization. The company said it must continue to take into account many local considerations in terms of managing the program.
"There is probably 75 percent or 80 percent of the things that we can still make consistent in terms of how our travelers are being served," said Meier, who after about 14 years with WorldTravel BTI and almost three years managing travel at Andersen, replaced Julie Rabern to head up Dell's travel program.