<B>Oracle Mandates</B>
<I>E-Travel In Talks With Rosenbluth International</I>
By Jay Campbell
After accommodating a mandate that nearly quadrupled online bookings of its parent company's domestic reservations from 15 percent, Oracle's E-Travel unit is poised to make news on a number of other fronts under the unit's new CEO Scott Gutz.
Not only will E-Travel by the end of this month release version 4.4 of its software that includes new modules for reporting, mobile connectivity and pre-trip approval, but the company also is on the verge of expanding its relationship with Rosenbluth International.
Details of the deal are sketchy, as the players work out final legal entanglements and signatures, but sources ruled out speculation that Rosenbluth may buy E-Travel. More likely, Rosenbluth could formalize its relationship with E-Travel to provide extraordinary support for implementations.
In the works for months, the E-Travel-Rosenbluth deal could be announced just after Oracle reports its fiscal 2001 third-quarter earnings on March 15.
"I can't substantiate any rumors at this point," said Gutz, who replaced E-Travel founder John Ackermann earlier this year after working for years at Oracle headquarters in Redwood Shores, Calif. "Oracle is in a quiet period at this time, so I'm forbidden to comment."
Nor did Rosenbluth chief information officer John Dabek have a specific comment last week, but he did describe Rosenbluth's work on the Oracle/E-Travel mandate: "We have to be able to assist customers like Oracle in promoting the use of e-booking. In this case, Oracle has a mandate, so we have to transition our travel service associates into individuals who can assist corporate travelers with the application as well. We're then applying the individuals we freed up as a result of efficiencies to other areas of the business."
Rosenbluth could be seeking to establish an e-fulfillment center, as have its major competitors (see story, page 1). Already, the mega migrated its Oracle domestic reservation center into a low-cost fulfillment center, complete with tiered pricing, to handle the virtually sudden rise in domestic bookings on E-Travel to 58 percent in early March from just 15 percent in January. If that's the case, there is no indication Rosenbluth would have any sort of exclusive position, since E-Travel already works with SatoTravel and, Gutz said, "We have plans of adding more. There are discussions with a number of players to offer better fulfillment services."
Oracle's corporate travel project manager for the E-Travel implementation, Katey Flanagan, said she is happy with the support she received from both E-Travel and Rosenbluth before and since announcing the March 1 domestic mandate in a Feb. 1 companywide e-mail.
"The challenge is to take a large number of dedicated agents and shift their mindset from handling the entire reservation themselves to supporting the self-service environment," said Flanagan. "Conversely, it is also difficult to convince employees that doing it themselves is the better approach moving forward. With Rosenbluth's help, we are seeing success."
She added that E-Travel quickly addressed "minor application glitches" in the software's latest release, version 4.3.1, and that the system itself proved capable of handling the massive volumes of a company that buys $150 million in booked air travel. Oracle expects to save 50 percent to 60 percent off its travel management operational costs.
With a few exceptions for new employees or those who are in transit and unable to access E-Travel, the mandate is for all travel that takes place wholly within North America, including multi-segment as well as point-to-point trips. "But that doesn't mean it doesn't work for international," said Flanagan. Indeed, an increase in international trips booked online proved to be a bonus, particularly on Oracle's biggest international city pair, San Francisco-London.
To help travelers get used to the application, Oracle provided various opportunities for Q&As and demos, including a live Web cast viewed by 750 employees during which Oracle's CFO Jeff Henley extended his support of the initiative.
From E-Travel's perspective, getting the travel application in front of Oracle's sales people is a significant step in attempting to leverage perhaps its greatest strategic advantage--being part of the world's second largest software maker.
"Now that the sales people and consultants use the product, it becomes a simple explanation," he said. "They'll say, 'I can log in here' " for a demonstration. E-Travel also will be presenting at a number of sales meetings later this year, and starting this summer, Oracle will introduce a new, related compensation program for sales reps. "I'd look for a surge of activity later," said Gutz. He had "no clear explanation" for why E-Travel had not previously been a bigger part of such product lines as Oracle's E-business suite 11i, but he did say that "everything we're doing from a development perspective would lead to E-Travel being a natural extension."
E-Travel now is displayed on Oracle's AppsNet Web site, what it calls the "community" for its E-business suite. Gutz also believes E-Travel's direct connections strategy fits well with the concept behind Oracle's business-to-business exchange.
Meanwhile, on the product side, E-Travel has "really taken a hard look at the product to be sure it's easy to use and that people understand where they were in the application and what to do next," said Gutz. "Where at first there was a lot of hand-holding required, we've done a lot of studies to make sure the product was ready for widespread deployment at Oracle and that individuals can use it right from the start."
E-Travel had assigned two or three people in Oracle headquarters for more than a month, Gutz said. He believes the experience with its parent company will give E-Travel "a lot more credibility" in the eyes of other large customers with lesser rollouts, such as Coca-Cola, Fidelity and Siemens.
After three upgrades in 2000 that focused on speed and performance, the 4.4 release due out by month's end will add the Travel Intelligence Internet-based reporting product that customers have "widely anticipated," said Gutz. Mobile capabilities are coming as well, along with pre-trip approval and unfinished trip features.
E-Travel said its solution does not require integration with expense reporting systems for the purposes of pre-trip approval, because it "actually has an out-of-the-box, fully integrated approval mechanism," said senior director of marketing Rob Wald. "You don't have to buy a certain expense system or do any custom integration."
Later in the year, E-Travel will introduce an English version for Europe and Asia/Pacific linked to the Galileo and Amadeus GDSs.
In terms of raising E-Travel's profile within Oracle, simply having Gutz onboard helps. "One of the reasons I came here in the first place was that I had dealt with senior management at Oracle for many years and have worked with our board on a variety of matters prior to the E-Travel acquisition," he said. "I have a lot of friends in high places."
However, the departure of Ackermann and, more recently, head of marketing Bart Littlefield, does have the drawback of taking away the company's start-up feel--much like what's happening at competitor GetThere since it was bought by Sabre.