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By Cheryl Rosen, Technology Editor
<B>IBM Globalizes Travel Site</B>
Eighteen months after rolling out an internal travel Web site for IBM's domestic travelers, project manager Lee Farnum this month took her program global. Now the project is available to IBM travelers in 25 countries and 18 languages.
The IBM travel site has been a labor of love for a core team of three in the United States--which grew on occasion to nine--and two representatives from each participating country. "We want our people to be subject experts, not technical experts," Farnum said. "Using Domino, 40 different people are able to make updates to the site without having any technical background. They write out what they want to say in Word Perfect or Lotus Notes, and Domino automatically converts it to HTML."
The site features 12 major categories of information that remain constant worldwide, while each participating country customizes the screens travelers see when they drill down. The headings include travel policies and procedures, reservations, useful Web sites, news, tips for travelers, travel forms, a site map and customer service, where travelers can send feedback either to suppliers or to the travel department. But there are also some unique features--and plans for even more.
The meetings area, for example, today includes the company's meeting policy and allows virtual site inspections of preferred meeting properties. But it also facilitates virtual meetings by allowing users to post presentations and collaborate via online white boards to which they all have access. The hope is one day to allow planners to search for hotel inventory and direct book the space they need for their groups.
The reimbursement area allows travelers to access their credit card information online, see the currency conversions of foreign charges as they are posted, and check on the status of their expense reports.
A global hotel directory lists all preferred IBM properties, and can be viewed by city, by metropolitan area or by proximity to an IBM location. The system highlights hotels that are "laptop friendly," meaning they offer guests easy access to a modem. Soon, IBM will add an icon to highlight hotels participating in its electronic folio program. Until now, six properties have been electronically transmitting full folio data to IBM every night (<I>BTN</I>, Aug. 2), but 40 more are expected to come online in the next quarter, and a "couple of hundred" more in 2000. While the hotels are not yet directly bookable on the site, that's a feature the travel department expects to add.
Also on the drawing board are online air booking capabilities. For now, the site accesses Internet-special rates and "some shuttle opportunities," but needs a booking system to become the global business-to-business purchasing site Farnum and IBM global travel manager Ed O'Donnell envision.
"Everything we are doing on the e-procurement side is going global," O'Donnell said, noting that while the travel site launched first in the United States, "our intention was always to go global. We also thought we'd have an online booking system by now, but we haven't chosen one yet. We're taking a long and complete look--we need to have an open architecture and make sure it's scalable, because with our size, we could bring any system to its knees."
IBM's U.S.-based travelers account for 60 percent to 65 percent of Big Blue's total travel tab of close to $1 billion, O'Donnell said, while the current global rollout encompasses 80 percent.
Farnum noted that rolling out a domestic site first greatly simplified the job of convincing international IBM sites to join in the travel Web site program, which she tackled in a whirlwind world tour. "When you start having these multicultural discussions, where you are trying to explain something across 12,000 miles and four time zones, it's much easier if you can say, 'Take a look at what we did in the United States,' " she said.
Farnum traveled to regional training sessions in Brussels, Buenos Aires and Singapore, meeting with two representatives--one from procurement and one from finance, the side of the house that sets policy and handles reimbursement--from each country that wanted to have its own site. She said, "We sat them down for three days and taught them how to do it, so they left knowing how to add content themselves.