Rosenbluth Alters Tech Tack
<B> Rosenbluth Alters Tech Tack</B>
By Sarah Welt
<I>Philadelphia</I> - Following in the footsteps of American Express and Carlson, Rosenbluth is moving away from offering only its home-grown technology solution. It now plans to offer a complete end-to-end solution next year as a way to better meet its clients' technology needs.
The initiative is just one of many in the works for the mega agency, which recently went through an internal restructuring aimed at improving its global account management and marketing capabilities, and creating more opportunities in electronic commerce.
Neil Bibeau, Rosenbluth's new chief information officer and marketing vice president, said the agency plans to offer an end-to-end solution--beginning with a booking component--by first quarter 1999. When asked if that makes its proprietary booking tool, E-Res, obsolete, Bibeau said, "We have to work with our clients on that. We are certainly going to put plans in place to help migrate to a new solution, or if our clients want us to, we will continue to support what is out there."
The company still will develop technology internally, but is moving more aggressively to also work with third parties. "What we are looking to do is go through a very rigorous assessment of whose technology we want to incorporate into a solution that we present to our clients," said Bibeau.
While Rosenbluth will offer an integrated end-to-end solution, it also will allow clients to choose from a suite of independent software systems.
The reorganization, meanwhile, is simply shifting some responsibility to Hans Amell--Rosenbluth's new chief operating officer, who came on board in May--and Bibeau himself, who joined the firm two months ago. Robert Infarinato also joined the team last spring as chief financial officer.
Talking with his new customers, Bibeau found that Rosenbluth needs to be "much more proactive in terms of establishing our value with respect to interactive technologies and how we incorporate that into our business model. People want a lot more detail on that, and we are putting that together along a very aggressive timeline."
Rosenbluth also is looking at its role with respect to interactive services, which is still being defined. Bibeau said he is investigating ways to harness the discounted Internet fares now being offered to leisure travelers for the corporate market.
Bibeau also acknowledged that the vice president of finance will be much more focused on mergers, acquisitions and joint ventures going forward. In a year, Bibeau said it wouldn't be unrealistic to expect to see Rosenbluth "in the $5 billion range"--more than double the $2 billion in air sales the agency reported for 1997 (<I>BTN,</I> May 25).