End To End Must Fit The individual Business Process

<B>End To End Must Fit The individual Business Process</B>

"We offer an end-to-end solution." This has become a popular marketing theme, but what exactly constitutes an end-to-end solution and does your company really need one?

There is no consistent definition, despite the fact that many classify the integration of self-booking, expense management and decision support as end-to-end products. This definition is too limited, especially in terms of the traveler's overall planning process and larger enterprise computing issues.

What represents an end-to-end solution for one company may fall short for another. In addition, different business processes often exist across divisions of the same company. Technology should not be viewed as the solution itself, but as an enabler that is applied within the context of an ideal business process. Thus, the first step in evaluating an end-to-end solution must be a comprehensive business process analysis. The ultimate goal should be to remove inefficiencies and incorporate a more strategic view of travel procurement.

Part of the confusion that exists in defining an end-to-end solution is contained within the three key subcomponents: the beginning, the middle and the end. Most would agree that the travel process really begins when the traveler starts planning a trip. Today, most business travelers use a personal information management program, such as Microsoft's Outlook or Lotus' Organizer, to plan their schedules. To truly be an effective end-to-end solution, travel information needs to become an integral part of the planning process.

Authorization is another important component of the front end of the travel process. Whether formal or informal, most employees seek approval from their managers before traveling. Managers need sophisticated, but easy to understand, decision-support tools to help evaluate the value of a given trip, based on criteria associated to their core mission.

Using a salesperson's T&E expenditures against their sales performances to calculate the "cost of sales" or evaluating total travel costs for a specific corporate customer measuring "the cost of customer support" can help management determine if a given trip is necessary. This is particularly relevant for travel associated with internal meetings or conferences. Trip management can yield more dramatic savings than policy management.

The middle portion of this end-to-end approach concerns customer profile integration and distributed decision support. A true end-to-end product should enable a single view of customer profile preferences that can be accessed by all travel sources (self-booking software, travel agents and suppliers).

Decision support that provides a consolidated view of all travel information (pre-trip, ticketed and expense data) is essential for effective analysis. This information must be tightly integrated with workflow technology to allow communication within the corporate network of any part of the travel transaction, thus enabling line management to proactively make travel decisions. When was the last time one of your department managers used travel behavior as a criterion for employee evaluations? Given the new positioning of T&E as the second largest corporate expense, such analysis demands a more comprehensive end-to-end solution.

Last, a comprehensive end-to-end solution must be tightly integrated with all corporate enterprise systems, including corporate portals, ERP (HR, GL, AP), decision support and e-procurement.

Do any suppliers offer a true end-to-end solution? Not yet, but many offer some key pieces to the puzzle. Some vendors emphasize enterprise computing while others focus on the agency-support process, but few cover both. Extensions to personal information management programs that bring the front-end planning and travel booking together are just arriving on the market. Regarding enterprise-level integration, most products simply import or export data, rather than provide a real-time exchange of information.

The true definition of an end-to-end solution depends on a company's business processes. Procurement must be integrated into a broader strategic activity in which travel becomes a business critical function.<I>

Norm Rose is president of Travel Tech Consulting Inc., a travel e-business consulting firm. He also operates TravelTechnology.com, a resource for travel technology intelligence.