Among the greatest challenges corporate travel management firms face as they consolidate is determining what to do about disparate technologies. The principals in the most recent moves—Amex-Rosenbluth, Carlson-Maritz and TQ3-Navigant—and other sources agreed that client data reporting is tops among several technology integration priorities that also include back-office accounting, quality control, profile management and agent desktops.
"For an acquisition to make sense, you have to get to some common platforms because it gets expensive to be supporting two or three and not achieving the scale and cost benefits," said TRX Inc. executive vice president of sales and client services Steve Reynolds. Cornerstone Information Systems president Mat Orrego agreed that "in general, the operations and IT side of it is really where the return on investment will come."
"The big customer concern when two corporate agencies merge is that you don't want an interruption of the data," said Hi-Mark Software president Kevin Austin. While Austin said that does not necessarily require merging the transactions from one back-office system into another, the industry's two mega acquisitions do appear to be heading to the same products, respectively. However, Austin and Reynolds noted, being on the same system does not necessarily solve every issue, since there are unique codes to identify clients that can overlap. The back office "is the real hard one," Reynolds said.
Maritz already had been seeking a new back-office system to replace its Agency Data Systems, and Carlson Wagonlit Travel owns MatrixPlus. "One of the advantages of the transaction is that it moves the organization to an established back-office system without having to acquire something," said Maritz Corporate Travel CIO Richard Spradling, who will take on the role of CIO for Maritz Inc. after the deal
(see story). CWT North America president Robin Schleien agreed that the back office "will be among the early decisions."
With a few months head start on its deal
(BTN, Aug. 11, 2003), American Express anticipates moving Rosenbluth to its system. "Rosenbluth had been transitioning away from GlobalMax to the Oracle database, and we were out of GlobalMax for the accounting work, but were still doing some GlobalMax interfaces for reporting," said Amex vice president and general manager for EMEA Ron DiLeo. "We were able to quickly undo that since we already knew how our back-room system interfaced with GlobalMax." He suggested that over a longer term of two to three years, that platform would be completely reinvented.
Amex this spring plans to provide additional details on its post-Rosenbluth products. A spokesperson said that between the two companies, there were 150 products and 90 overlapped. The technology integration will be complete by year-end, said Amex corporate travel vice president Nancy Carlin, but "beginning in the early summer we'll start to bring our systems together, and not everything has to happen at once. It's ongoing work, and there are certain critical milestones where you bring significant systems together and then you also work on processes."
Amex's Portfolio reporting product is based on dated Hi-Mark technology, while Rosenbluth's Ivision uses the latest, Web-based Hi-Mark tools. Amex has been paying MicroStrategy to develop a Web-based reporting tool.
Carlin said she could not specifically address Amex's intentions on travel management reporting, pending further talks with clients, but noted that such details will emerge "over the next several months. There may be times where you take one or the other, but more often than not we look at it more as a hybrid opportunity."
Maritz only recently moved to Hi-Mark for reporting
(BTN, June 23, 2003). "Consolidated global data and reporting has been a challenge for this industry forever," Schleien said, noting that plenty of decisions have yet to be made. "This marks a very significant event for customers who have, at any level, the need for globally consolidated data. Maritz Corporate Travel clients will be able to take full advantage of it."
Navigant chairman, president and CEO Ed Adams praised the global data reporting services of TQ3, noting that the new joint venture will enable clients to achieve "the next level" and "the first opportunity to really provide total corporate travel management reporting." Navigant in 2001 introduced ReportFLYR, after discontinuing its work with Hi-Mark, on which TQ3 is standardizing for reporting. "We decided to move away from Hi-Mark because we wanted a more customizable tool with additional functions and features, but both organizations will be looking at both tool sets," said Navigant CIO Ken Migaki. "The key now is to make sure we get the feeds to service customers. Longer term, we may go to one tool or consider a hybrid approach." Officials said it may not be necessary for the two organizations to use the same products, since data handoffs between systems today are commonplace.
"Ultimately, we wish to have one global data warehouse," said TQ3 global COO Toby Joseph. In terms of the feed for such reporting, TQ3Navigant is fortunate in that it already was standardizing in Europe on Amadeus' Ace, which also is what TQ3 mainly uses. In the United States, meanwhile, Navigant is focused on migrating its mega acquisition, Sato Travel, onto GlobalMax.
In the mid-office—which WorldTravel BTI president Danny Hood said in the U.S. handles the tasks of 400 of its agents—it would appear that Amex-Rosenbluth have an easier go of it than CWT-Maritz, since the former both are using TRX products. "On e-transactions, Amex is showing 85 percent first-pass yield," Amex's DiLeo said, referring to one way of describing so-called touchless reservations. "Rosenbluth was nowhere near where Amex was, but we were comparable on the telephonic side. Both are sitting on TRX foundations, although we had configured them in a different way. Put them together, and you've got cash falling from the sky."
Reynolds said that while the Amex-Rosenbluth integration process is underway, "we're hoping we can convince Carlson to switch over." CWT now uses Aqua Software products in the mid-office.
Aqua is owned by Navigant, but TQ3 is using a quality control tool developed internally, called Compleat. "We've been discussing how we can use the tools together in a fully automated and robotic environment," said Michel Labianca, CIO of EMEA and Asia for TQ3. The tool was developed beginning last year to help TQ3 build its fulfillment center in Belgium, Labianca said, and TQ3 will consider how it could work with Aqua as part of a pilot that will begin in May.
Traveler profile management is yet another key area of tech integration. Like all profile synchronization initiatives, it is fraught with danger. "Unless you have every profile written the exact same way, you're going to have a problem," DiLeo said. "We have done all that work. Amex has a proprietary profile synchronization process, and it is the same everywhere."
Both Navigant and TQ3 recently had begun to test Web-based traveler profile tools. "Our goal is to migrate to one standard," Labianca said, referring to ICSA T's Vista+Ace product.
While CWT offers its CWT Portrait profile management system, Schleien praised Maritz's ProView. "There has been considerable investment by Maritz Corporate Travel that parallels ours," he said. "We'll take what's not in our Symphonie suite and is in ProView and merge it into the product line. I can't tell you exactly how it will play out, but I'm confident it will."
At Maritz, 99 percent of agents are using ProView, which serves as the traveler profile tool and the agent point-of-sale interface—although air bookings still are made directly in GDS systems, pending a test of new functionality. "ProView operates on all four GDSs, so retraining associated with moving agents from one GDS to another is for a small set of air-specific native commands that continue to be GDS-specific," MCT's Spradling said. "Going forward, it's important to have GDS-independent platforms so that positions you for any eventuality with regard to how GDS deregulation occurs." CWT's Harmony interface also is GDS-agnostic.
In terms of Rosenbluth's initiative to co-fund TRX's Selex agent point-of sale tool
(BTN, Oct. 20, 2003), "we sunk a lot of money in that and we still own it," DiLeo said. "The integration team looked at what we were focused on and what Amex had already in progress, and we were able to do a greatest hits collection that will make the Amex offering even more compelling. Rosenbluth offices will be upgraded to the Amex standard that has both components in it, and that's happening as we speak."
All of these megas employ multi-GDS strategies, although Rosenbluth most heavily was focused on one partner, Galileo. "Yes," DiLeo added, "Rosenbluth had a huge relationship with Galileo and that relationship is still there, but Amex is something large to everyone."