Travel Inc. Gives Clients A Leg Up
<B> Travel Inc. Gives Clients A Leg Up</B>
By Sarah Welt
<I>Duluth, Ga.</I> - A new proprietary, Web-based management reporting system from Travel Inc. has been a hit with clients using the data to negotiate better agreements with preferred suppliers.
Galaxy was developed in-house by Travel Inc.'s technology division using Crystal Report Writer. Users access it on the Travel Inc. Web site, generating customized reports within user-defined parameters that they can e-mail right from the system. A transaction search component gives accounting personnel the ability to track every aspect of a traveler's trip. Additionally, it offers an e-ticket tracking mechanism that tracks by segment instead of transaction.
Launched on Jan. 1, Galaxy is being used by 250 customers, who get the package as part of their management fee. Travel Inc. now wants to market it to ARC-designated Corporate Travel Departments and is considering making it available to customers of other agencies as well.
Tampa-based Intermedia Communications Inc., with $10 million in total annual travel, switched to Travel Inc. last December and rolled out Galaxy four months ago. Already it has been able to save 4 percent of its air spend, 15 percent of car rental costs, 10 percent of overall hotel expenditures and 40 to 50 percent of its corporate housing tab.
In the past, when reports took 60 to 90 days, the company's vendor agreements suffered. "I just about lost a contract because I didn't know I wasn't making quota until the airline called," said senior travel manager Donna Reidy. "Now I am never in that situation." Additionally, the reports that Intermedia received were "very basic" and it took "a lot of labor" on Reidy's part to get summaries ready for the CFO.
Another customer, CheckFree Corp. of Norcross, Ga., has been using Galaxy for online reports for about six months. The data is "95 percent accurate" at all times, said director of purchasing Tom Gildea.
The company is using the data to help renegotiate its car rental and hotel agreements. "We are identifying new hotel options we hadn't considered," said travel manager Renee McDaniel. She now can tell a hotelier when "we've given them 300 room nights in the last month" and recently has negotiated room nights with several properties in the Columbus, Ohio, area.
On the airline side, Gildea said CheckFree is using the data to extensively evaluate its current contract with Delta Airlines. Added McDaniel, "Our current contracts are up for renewal at the end of May, so we will be using Galaxy to see how compliant we have been and where we have given more than our requested share."
Danka Business Systems, a $4 million air-volume account in St. Petersburg, Fla., has been using Galaxy since it began beta testing last August. "We will end this year with a travel expense almost 30 percent below projections because I have been able to keep senior management informed, and implement travel freezes when it made sense to do so," travel manager Karena Espinosa wrote to Travel Inc.
In the next release, clients said they would like to be able to query the system for specific data instead of pulling an entire report into a file. "I'd like to format my own reports, rather than weeding out information I don't need," Gildea said.