BCD Travel has launched a marketplace of third‐party travel
technology solutions called SolutionSource. The platform is geared toward
travel managers and sourcing professionals and joins BCD’s TripSource and
DecisionSource platforms.
BCD SVP of product planning and development Yannis Karmis
said the travel management company has seen a pick up in the pace of new technology
entrants in the managed corporate travel space in recent years, which is
exciting for BCD and its customers. “But it kind of brings the challenge of how
are we going to work with them in a more consistent, effective way?” he said.
“We've had relationships with third parties for a long time. We've worked with
security providers and many others for a decade plus. But we really haven't had
a consistent engagement model for how we put these relationships in place, how
we manage the flow of data, how we manage the implementation process with these
standards in place.”
SolutionSource is launching with nine partners in place:
Anvil, CIBTvisas, FairFly, Freebird, iJet, Rocketrip, Taxeo, Tripbam and Yapta. BCD
director of product planning Irina Matz said some of those providers come from
longstanding BCD partnerships while others are new and based on
potential client need. “As we continue to bring partners on board, we look at each
of them to make sure that they bring value to our clients,” Matz said. “We make
sure that we've done a security technology assessment, make sure that we've got
a really defined workflow for them and make sure that they can integrate
across all of our platforms.” There is a large pipeline of additional partners
poised to join the platform, Matz said.
All BCD clients have access to SolutionSource, much in
the way they all have access to TripSource and DecisionSource. The three
platforms work together, Karmis said. For example, reservation data that’s
viewable to the traveler through TripSource, the traveler-facing digital
platform for BCD, is also fed into BCD’s reporting and analytics DecisionSource
platform and then may flow back out to Tripbam for price monitoring or iJet for
safety and security. “These platforms are very interconnected and will continue
to get more and more interconnected as the technology evolves,” Karmis said.
SolutionSource is live for BCD clients. Matz
declined to provide details on the revenue model for SolutionSource but said
BCD does have commercial agreements in place with all its launch
partners.