Agency Tech Providers Expand Mid-Office Offerings

Travel technology providers TRX, Cornerstone and GDSX are developing alternative approaches to their mid-office technology solutions that integrate reservation platform processes with data reporting. This enables agencies to customize their mid-office technology, and in one case adopt a service-bureau approach.

TRX this month announced plans to release enhancements to its Correx reservation processing platform in the fourth quarter of 2007. Correx, which serves as a service bureau for TMCs' mid-office automation tools, is shifting to the Gen6 platform, which allows TMCs to program automation and fulfillment processes. The platform will have a new integrated interface that, along with corporate account information, includes data reports from dashboards, service-level metrics and benchmarks.

TRX enhanced Correx with an advisory board of mega travel management companies, regional agencies, corporate travel buyers and an airline, according to president and CEO Trip Davis.

"It's ultimately about the user environment and enabling the travel manager or procurement executive to provide visibility across the organization," Davis said. Unlike its Correx predecessor, the enhanced platform fits better for small and medium-sized agencies, with a scalable cost model, that Davis would not disclose. "Gen6 is something that is a little more flexible and a little more cost effective," he said.

TRX's break from the service-bureau approach by enabling TMCs to handle their mid-office platform programming is an effort to recapture and broaden marketshare as such competitors as GDSX have gained traction, said Steve Reynolds, vice president of technical solutions for Management Alternatives, and a former TRX executive.

"With that added competition, TRX has decided to open up their system a bit more and allow these agencies to do their own programming," he said.

TRX competitor Cornerstone Information Systems has planned a similar undertaking of integrating data and mid-office technology for agencies. According to Cornerstone president and CEO Mat Orrego, the Bloomington, Ind.-based company will integrate its reservation processing platform IQCX and its IBank reporting application into a consolidated Web-based portal.

A single point of entry for the reservation and data management processes is an adaptation to the industry's needs as broken- out mid-office applications fade away, Orrego said. The entire fulfillment process within the industry is integration," he said. "More and more of everything needs to go to the point of sale. Everything needs to be unified—the QC, the mid-office process needs to be brought up to the point of sale."

The enhancements are in response to the demands of the changing industry, Orrego added. "The challenge there is that the platform means so many different things to so many different people, depending on what they are doing in the travel industry, that what we are looking at is something that is very open-ended," he said. "You create your own dashboard, your own functionality and then you drop that into a Web browser and that becomes your view of your travel program. Whether it's a corporate perspective, an agency perspective or an airline perspective, it's all reservation management."

TRX and Cornerstone, with their latest enhancements, enter into a market niche until now dominated by GDSX's customizable licensed software offering to agencies. The Plano, Texas-based company this week announced the launch of Compleat Managed Service, a mid-office service-bureau platform based on the legacy-hosted Compleat system, which launched in the North American market in 2004, according to GDSX CEO Jon Farrier.

The new system also targets smaller agencies and franchise consortia without the resources or infrastructure to do their own programming. Compleat Managed Services recently beta tested with a group of regional agencies and franchise consortia, which are the product's target customers, said Farrier, who recommends the system for agencies with less than $25 million in ARC volume. "There are customers who don't want to build the watch," Farrier said. "They just want to know what the time is."