London - HSBC last month rolled out its first general online booking system, becoming the first to use BTI's "second-generation" European booking tool.
Prior to its integration with HSBC, Republic Bank in the late 1990s built a pioneering but short-lived direct connection to British Airways
(BTN, Aug. 2, 1999). Yet, the global travel team here has waited until now to deliver a program that it can integrate fully with HSBC's e-procurement strategy.
The reservations tool set-up is one of the most thoroughly plumbed into a company's e-processes on either side of the Atlantic. Tony Pilcher, head of global business travel management for HSBC, achieved this by seizing an opportunity to participate in the development of Hogg Robinson's new self-service reservations tool, BTI Online
(see story). The tool features new-generation programming language, which made it easier to join up to HSBC's newly introduced e-procurement platform, Buysmart, a private-label adaptation of Ariba.
Consequently, the tool has the same look and feel as the rest of HSBC's intranet. Users enter the Buysmart catalog through their computer desktops, where they can purchase items from stationery to mobile phones and temporary labor. Buysmart carries each employee's personal data, plus cost center and departmental data, all of which flow through all of the different applications, including travel, thus saving considerable duplication in data entry. "Our aim is to eliminate touch where touch adds cost but not value," Pilcher said.
After the booking is made, the integration continues into the authorization process, where the workflow is automated and structured in the same way for travel as for all other purchasing categories. Finally, the system makes an automatic debit for the purchase from the traveler's cost center. At the same time, management information flows inside the travel booking system to link up with other BTI data products, such as the contract analysis tool and emergency traveler location system, People Tracker. The one area where integration has not been completed is in flowing the travel management information back into the rest of the bank's procurement data. Pilcher is trying to solve this problem by creating XML files.
Pilcher regards the booking tool as the latest stage of the consolidation of the HSBC travel program, which started in 1993 when then-Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank bought the U.K.'s Midland Bank. Pilcher, who joined Midland in 1968, originally in branch banking, was given the job of consolidating policy, agency selection and supplier programs. His responsibilities were extended to a global remit in 1999.
Today, HSBC has a global air spend in excess of £30 million (US$54.7 million) in 81 countries, although more than 50 percent originates in the United Kingdom, with another 20 percent in the United States and most of the rest in the Asia/Pacific region.
HSBC introduced Buysmart after launching a major strategic review in 2001 to consider how to use technology for service and process improvements. As a result, Pilcher started to review online booking tools in tandem with conducting a global travel management company request for proposals in 2003. "At the heart of the tender was the ability of the TMC to manage a booking tool that could integrate into our e-procurement system," Pilcher said. The contract was awarded to BTI, which already handled HSBC in the United Kingdom, North America and Argentina. So far, consolidation has extended to 14 countries.
As part of its tender, BTI had demonstrated its own fledgling tool alongside those of various third-party providers, but it was the in-house offering that appealed most to HSBC. "Part of the decision to appoint BTI was that we felt we could work with them in the development of the tool," Pilcher said. "I did not think there were products in the market earlier that fulfilled our needs, so we cherry-picked the best practices. What we have now is ahead of anything else out there, especially in terms of integration with an e-procurement system."
Bill Brindle, director of technology for BTI, acknowledged the input made by HSBC, which reported more than 70 bugs, fixes and recommendations after the initial pilot. Pilcher categorized them as "must have before launch," "nice to have before launch" and "for future development."
"The architecture was already built, but HSBC had a direct influence on the usability of the tool," Brindle said. "It helped with some of the layout, such as the display sequencing, and with the integration with Ariba."
The first release of HSBC's version of BTI Online includes air, hotel and chauffeur parking content, with rail and car rental to come. The air module searches negotiated and public fares in the GDS and also scans BTI's consolidated fares database and the Internet. Travelers can choose an option to include no-frills carriers in their search. When the system responds with a range of appropriate flights, it indicates which fares are flexible and which are not, so that bookers can weigh the relative benefits of a cheaper fare against the greater versatility of a full-price ticket. HSBC also has built in a policy rule that the system will only display inflexible fares if they are a minimum amount cheaper than a full fare. In the hotel module, the most noteworthy feature is that the tool includes room allocations for HSBC at some of its preferred hotels.
Following the launch of the booking tool, which has been promoted internally through a travel fair for employees, plus an assortment of leaflets and posters, Pilcher aims for an eventual adoption rate of 60 percent for air bookings. He aims even higher for hotel and car hire. "I see no reason why we should not do all of them online," he said.
Hogg Robinson has not actively marketed its BTI Online tool to compete with GetThere and other offerings. Brindle said it has been rolled out with two other major corporate clients, one a well-known investment bank, and is also the booking engine for its BTI UK Online Web site, aimed principally at small and medium-size corporate customers.
One point on which it diverges sharply from Travelport, the other newly launched online booking tool in the European market, is that, in Brindle's words, it "won't do heavy-duty policy. If you want to specify that a certain grade of manager flying to New York can travel in business class but only at certain times of the day and with a minimum connection time, then our product does not go into that depth," he said. "We are designed to be quick, fast and sharp." Brindle pointed out that some clients employ two full-time BTI staffers to manage other booking tools.
Travelport said it is a so-called "second generation" booking tool because it is able to handle complex policy, thus making it more appealing to the European market. Brindle is unsure this is the correct approach. "Travelport looks like a very flexible engine, but it will be interesting to see how much that flexibility will be used," he said. "It is something I am not convinced about yet. Our product is a new-generation tool because it is coded in the latest versions of Microsoft development language, which enable faster integration in the evolving world of Web services."