Jumping Automation Hurdles
<B>Jumping Automation Hurdles</B>
It appears that we all are pondering the issue of user adoption and what we can do to speed the process of automating the reservations process. I've initiated a study to understand our requirements of technology within the reservations process, and how we might be getting in our own way without realizing it.
Industry technologists have done a credible job at creating graphical user interfaces that have gotten us past the user-friendliness issues that originally slowed our acceptance of automation. Significant strides also have been made to make us feel more secure about ordering online.
Other critical issues that hampered the introduction of corporate desktop booking systems also have been overcome: The ability of the system to obtain the lowest fare, and the capability to accommodate policy guidelines and screen biasing to the corporation's preferences.
Systems also can pull profiles that travelers have completed, thus eliminating paperwork and huge time consumption. Most systems can book air, hotel and car segments, as well as price them competitively. Travelers can find out for themselves how difficult it is to get that aisle seat! Automated quality control software checks for date continuity and other potential entry errors, and will continue to check for better seats and fares. These are no small victories for automation.
Still, we hear that automation doesn't "do everything that an agent does." Let's put these issues aside to look at the PNRs we are creating, and take a closer look at our service expectations.
If the PNR were carved into two areas, they would be the following: The transaction, or, the act of booking air, hotel, and rental car from some inventory, and the rest of the stuff we pile into the reservation record, or PNR fodder.
In a standard PNR there are fewer than 10 lines attributed to that which makes up the booking data, i.e., reservation, whereas there are typically more than 50 lines of information and crosschecks stored in "remarks lines" that make up the total PNR.
The latter is compiled from information that is stored by the travel agency within the GDS's "master files" for the corporation. By accessing the master files, the agent can identify and act upon any component of the corporation's policies. Master files enable the agent to include in the PNR the correct entries that later will appear on the travel manager's cost/lost savings reports. The complex GDS files identify the corporation's savings windows, approval levels, credit card policies, ground transportation policies and beyond the imaginable.
All of these points are required for the agency to "fulfill" the reservation process or bring it to completion in a way that meets the service expectation of the corporation. And much of this intervention is for crosschecks that ensure a previously agreed upon end result.
Do we need, then, to alter our service expectations for post-travel information delivery in order to avoid the costly, human-dependent fulfillment process? We will not get to an automated transaction fee low enough to produce a stunning ROI if there are still agents involved in the process, particularly when they are providing double checks from some master list.
If travelers have made their reservations from biased screens that impose corporate policy, do we still need an agent to re-review the records? Can we live with a new kind of report that will come from the automated system, such as a true exception report where only those bookings outside of policy are reported by e-mail? Can we learn to get information from other sources less costly than those accumulated by a human agent?
One major hurdle is left before we get to the totally automated transaction, thus the totally automated transaction fee. That is, systems must be able to generate tickets without interaction by a human. When this hurdle is met, we need to be prepared for the true agentless reservation.
It will be interesting to see what we decide we really need for information from the PNR, and whether we can eliminate several layers of redundancy within our reservations processes that are tied to PNR fodder.
<I>Terry Sullo is program manager for the Center for Travel Management at Salem State College in Salem, Mass.