Profiles In Travel Management: Thomson Quickly Deploys Axiom - 2007-07-23

Company: Thomson Corp.
Headquarters: Stamford, Conn.
U.S. Booked Air Spend: $44 million

Thomson Corp. recently transitioned from its legacy online booking tool and rolled out the Rearden Commerce-based American Express Intelligent Online Marketplace as its online booking and travel procurement platform to about 12,000 travelers across all of Thomson North America's business units in little more than a month.

Citing a multifaceted communications program, collaboration with travel management company American Express and an easy-to-use interface, Thomson director of travel services Sharon Fogarty expects higher adoption of the new platform than previous online booking tool GetThere, despite the nonmandating orientation of the Corporate Travel 100 company.

Stamford, Conn.-based Thomson internally debuted Axiom on May 22 to the Thomson Financial division, which encompasses about 2,500 travelers who predominately book for themselves, following a multistep communications program that prepared travelers for the transition from GetThere. The internally well-received move was spearheaded by the collaborative efforts of Thomson's travel program leaders and American Express, which handles Thomson's travel in 22 countries, according to Fogarty.

"The feedback has been tremendous," she said. "I have to give American Express kudos on their communications, the information they provide, their follow-up, etc."

Fogarty developed a prescribed multistage pre-rollout notification and information program and implemented it in early May, to ease the transition into the new booking tool. However, the Thomson travel team opted for a shorter communications period than Amex's three-week standard. "They had the templates for us. We just had to tweak them," Fogarty said.

Thomson's program began with e-mail announcements a week and a half prior to launch, followed by a welcome e-mail letter the day before implementation. "We did not do the voicemail notification. It would just clog up voicemail," she said. Thomson decided not to bombard travelers with e-mail notification in advance of the rollout, opting instead to provide travelers with links to their profiles on launch day, when the opportunity to use them was immediate.

Following the rollout, an Amex administrator dedicated to the Thomson account initiated dialogue with end users and reported back to Fogarty. "In the first week, with the first 20 bookings, she personally called each one of those for their feedback," Fogarty said. "There were about 12 people she either reached or they called back. With the exception of one person, everyone said, 'This is so much easier to use.' "

WebEx tutorials were key in the rollout, Fogarty said. The company held two general Web seminars for travelers and two sessions for administrators who arrange travel.

"It was kind of to whet their appetite," she said. "My gut feeling is that if you've gone onto a leisure Web site to book, you don't need training for that. Why would you need training for this?"

Despite low attendance of 30 people for each demo session, there has been positive feedback, Fogarty said. "I've been waiting for the phone to ring or through e-mail to hear any negative comments, but I haven't seen any," Fogarty said. "That's why we piloted one group to see what would happen."

Fogarty said the reduction of transaction fees in using a self-booking tool was not a factor in the decision, but the interface and booking capabilities of the Axiom tool were. "From the transaction viewpoint, transaction fees are there anyway. For us, it's ease of use."

While Thomson's travelers now have access via Axiom to an array of peripheral travel procurement services, such as shipping packages, booking dining and parking, Fogarty said there have been only a handful of users for those features, who are mainly administrators responsible for booking travel. "We have a lot of administrators who book for their bosses, and to have those features creates less stress for their lives," Fogarty said.

Although it's too soon since the launch to have quantifiable adoption numbers, Fogarty said that she expects Thomson's Axiom use to be high. She noted that the incumbent online booking tool had an adoption rate of 42 percent. "Based on the transactions I've seen on Axiom in the last month versus what their average count is, I wouldn't be surprised if it goes through a 70 percent adoption rate."

"As far as using Axiom or online versus offline, we have not mandated that, but it is highly suggested or a soft mandate," she said. Prior to the full deployment, she added, "The other units are chomping at the bit."