<B>Switching Booking</B>
<I>Early Adopters Migrate With Minimal Pain</I>
By Jay Campbell
Facing the challenges of switching online booking tools for the first time, some of the earliest adopters, particularly customers of American Express' AXI and Sabre's BTS, are finding the problems are often easily minimized.
AXI and BTS clients are moving on because sooner and later, respectively, those products will disappear. Customers of other systems also are considering new vendors. Indianapolis-based Thomson Multimedia, for example, is reviewing its options after achieving more than 55 percent usage of Worldspan's Trip Manager.
Buyers taking this plunge would be removing an incumbent product whose style and procedures are familiar to travelers and whose databanks include profiles, passwords and company-specific policies. Further, as with other types of travel vendors, the cost of switching is of utmost consideration.
The agency or booking vendor could charge as much as tens of thousands of dollars to move data on policies, profiles or prices from one product to another, but of course everything is negotiable. Companies might attempt to get the new vendor to cover the cost of switching, or at least to include it in the implementation fee. In terms of service, buyers who have worked hard to establish usage are keen on minimizing the impact of such a switch on travelers. For them, the biggest change is in the user interface.
"In the current environment, some systems go through major updates once a quarter, sometimes including a new user interface," said Bob Lichtman, partner in The Corporate Solutions Group, a consulting firm based in Incline Village, Nev. "These updates can be tantamount to a client changing online booking tools every year."
The new user interface was one of the more challenging aspects of switching tools at Microsoft, but contracts manager for global travel and relocation Jill Donnelly also characterized it as a minimal issue. Microsoft earlier this year dropped AXI, the product it co-developed with Amex in 1997 (BTN, April 9). "The user interface between the two tools is very different and information may be in different places, so you have a bit of a learning curve," said Donnelly. Nonetheless, Microsoft detected no drop in online usage due to a change in the interface with about 18 percent of tickets going through AXI.
Another challenge in terms of servicing travelers is synchronizing traveler profiles (see story, page 1). Tech vendors should be capable of extracting, parsing and reloading from one system into another, said Lichtman, "but some fall through the cracks and then you have to ask travelers to update their own profiles." He noted that these issues are equally problematic when switching GDSs. Microsoft's solution was to keep its agency, which linked its profiles and preferred rates databases to the new product.
"This is the best reason to work with an organization that has experience with such transitions and can support you through the process, offering communication plans and materials, managing customer profiles and knowing the preferred-supplier formulas," said Henry Blinder, vice president of Amex's interactive travel group. "Customers need a partner in this."
Amex has been transitioning clients from AXI to GetThere-developed Corporate Travel Online and other products. Aiming to make AXI RIP by May 31, Amex is helping Ford, among others, move to CTO and charging "abnormally low" switching costs, said Ford technical specialist Doug Thiel.
Another source said Amex is providing the switch for free to clients who choose CTO--something other booking vendors still scrambling for new business might be persuaded to do.
Despite its apparent pricing advantages though, some buyers warned against relying too much on a given agency, booking or GDS vendor, preferring the flexibility that independence affords. Cheryl Hutchinson, senior principal of corporate travel at American Management Systems in Fairfax, Va., said even travel managers not planning to switch booking tools should consider how tied they want to be to a given vendor. While she agreed that there is not a lot of cost to changing vendors, she asked, "Is adopting your booking company's meeting tool going to increase your costs of change later on?"
Travel manager Lisa Trenda at Minneapolis-based Cargill Inc. plans to issue an RFP for a product to replace AXI. "No matter who you go with, the players are still changing and we don't want to be tied to a specific supplier," said Trenda.
Stuck after three years at a usage level of 5 percent of ticketed volume on AXI, pharmaceutical company Novartis is moving to CTO this quarter. East Hanover, N.J.-based executive director Paul Tomaszeski criticized vendors for diving in and then out again on technology products, saying that takes control away from the buyer. "It's frustrating and disruptive for our users when a vendor 'sunsets' its product," he said. "We've seen a consistent, disturbing pattern of change."
Fortunately, it's much simpler to convert from one brand of Web-based software to another than it is to install, then uninstall and reinstall desktop-based software. "There are opportunities with portable databases and XML interfaces that have more efficient conversion processes," said Galileo vice president of corporate and consumer sales John Hach. "That flexibility empowers a travel manager to have more control in negotiations.