Forbes Will Leave KDS & Bressy Will Become CEO

CEO Dean Forbes will leave T&E provider KDS by Dec. 16 to pursue other projects, he told BTN. KDS executive vice president of business operations and CFO Roxana Bressy, who has been with KDS for six years, will replace Forbes. Meanwhile, American Express Global Business Travel, which acquired KDS Oct. 4, will "more than double" the product development team "to enable KDS to continue to work for all customers and TMCs and focus on the work that will drive value for Amex GBT," Forbes added.

For the KDS-Amex GBT merger, BTN named both Forbes and Amex GBT digital traveler vice president Evan Konwiser among BTN's 2016 25 Most Influential.

Bressy previously served as CFO and HR director at medical device manufacturer Nobel Biocare, and she also has held management roles at Hewlett Packard subsidiary Mercury Interactive, software startup Total Immersion and Japanese conglomerate Hitachi.

End of the Road

Forbes is leaving the company for a variety of reasons. For one, he said, he needs a break after seven years of running the company, which often meant being on the road for a minimum of four days a week and sleeping only six hours a night. He likened the journey to training for and running a marathon.

"You condition your whole body to run 26 miles, and if you have to run 27, you probably can't do it. … My body reacted to completing its 26th mile, and the fatigue of that journey and the toll those seven years have taken on me personally and physically just came rushing to the front as we closed. … I think it's the right time to move on."

After the deal was signed, as the companies ironed out how they would integrate and build digital products and services focused on the traveler experience, they concluded it would be best for Forbes to leave. Amex GBT CEO Doug Anderson and chief commercial and technology officer Philippe Chereque were "great," patient and understanding, according to Forbes.

He also had acknowledged that the merger with Amex GBT meant some of KDS's "cavalier" business practices would have to be "refined."

Also, Forbes had found product strategy the most enjoyable part of leading KDS. That involved reimagining products and "thinking up new ways to fix old problems." He said, "As part of Amex GBT, there's a strong line of strategy, which is about making those products highly integrated and interoperable with GBT's back office and the commercial structure and supplier network. It's a big part of their strategy, and it's going to create a lot of value for GBT and GBT customers, but that is quite different from getting around the table and imagining something like Neo from scratch."

Forbes impressed upon Amex GBT that while he was the face of KDS innovation and disruption, Bressy was the one who handled HR, legal and project time lines. She also is familiar with "every customer, contract, implementation, issue and dispute we've ever had," he said. "She would be a much more reliable basis for understanding the company and how it operates and what you can and can't break," Forbes said.

Additionally, Forbes long has been a critic of travel management companies. "That TMCs need us and can't do this on their own because they're bad at technology is something that I've pushed in my teams. So you don't want [me] switching sides now and saying, 'Actually they're pretty smart.' There's no credibility in that. Get me out of the way," Forbes said.

Forbes' Legacy

Forbes joined KDS as CEO in 2011, and in February 2012, KDS had begun work on Neo, the reimagined, automated, door-to-door mobile corporate T&E booking tool. Instead of booking travel in components—flight, then hotel, then rental car—travelers could book travel by answering three questions: Where does the journey begin, where will it end and what time does the traveler need to be there?

KDS launched Neo in February 2013. With the tool's consumer interface and user experience, traits Forbes championed for all business travel technology, Neo stood out among legacy booking tools, which are often criticized as looking, feeling and functioning exactly like corporate-issued tools. In showcasing Neo at conferences, Forbes often wowed crowds and left industry experts speechless.

In August 2013, KDS won its first TMC partner, Carlson Wagonlit Travel, of which Anderson was CEO at the time. By July 2016, KDS had nine TMC partners in North America.

Each year following Neo's launch, KDS added innovative functionality and new partnerships. In 2013, it launched Neo Expense—which automatically creates line items from receipts captured through the mobile app, now a standard feature for most expense systems—and ditched the traditional spreadsheet interface of expense reporting tools for a calendar display that visualized expenses on the days and times they were incurred. It also announced its expansion into North America by naming Mike Concannon general manager of the Americas.

While the company was well known in Europe, expansion across the Atlantic was challenging for various reasons, notwithstanding Concur's strong foothold in the country. Forbes did not relent. He believed strong customer service and innovation would "win the hearts and minds" of North Americans, he told The Beat in 2014. KDS slowly won clients.

However, attaining new customers through TMC partnerships, a strategy both Forbes and Concannon championed, would prove insufficient if they expected to win market share from Concur and other booking tools. The corporate travel industry's disinclination for change was another obstacle.

"Turning around a company that competes with companies with much deeper pockets and other significant product lines, [as well as] competing with a GDS that's often making their online booking tool their loss leader because they're trying to get revenue for other things—that's tough to compete against," Forbes said. "It wasn't tough [to compete] because people had better products. Most of the time they really didn't—and they would almost admit they didn't have good products—but they just had more to bring to the customer for the deal to make sense."

Forbes often defended his willingness to stay independent, despite frequently attracting buyers, but getting acquired was "inevitable," he told BTN after the deal closed. Amex GBT provides the financial resources and brand power KDS needed to "scale to the next level," he said.

He was right all along, it seems. He often criticized TMCs' lack of innovation, dated technology and deficient user experience, saying they couldn't do it without forward-thinking companies like KDS keeping them on their toes. So, in this case, a mega TMC acquired such a company.