HRG Accelerating Efforts To Build Common Tech Platform
U.K.-based multinational travel management company HRG is refocusing its technology development efforts, redeploying resources and moving product upgrades up the priority list to accelerate its move to an enhanced, common technology platform.
"As far as we are concerned, now is the time to bring together resources," said HRG CEO David Radcliffe. "That is where they are getting that value and that's where they won't mind paying us for the value. I'm not looking at huge technology reductions. I'm looking at redirecting it and making what we've got even better."
The travel management company this year combined some back-office systems, invested in new telecommunications and further deployed components of its overarching Universal Super Platform technology infrastructure, now used by some of its agency partners and clients.
In Europe, HRG has further invested in its business travel capacity management project by upgrading telephony systems, which enables calls to flow around Europe and more agents to migrate to home offices. In the United Kingdom, there are now 14 business travel centers, down from about 45 five years ago, and more than 200 home-based agents, according to Radcliffe. "That is a natural consequence of technology," he said.
HRG technology in Hong Kong and Singapore links with its regional financial center in Melbourne, which now houses a centralized round-the-clock multilingual travel alert team to "provide scope to rationalize our operations across the region," according to the company's half-year interim results, released late last month.
With agency partner Dnata, its largest shareholder, the travel management company in 2009 will roll out a common technology platform in the Middle East, including elements of the super platform now being deployed in other regions.
Deployment of such Universal Super Platform components as the HRG Point of Sale agent desktop and HRG Online is accelerating and heavy upgrade work is underway on a proprietary data suite.
North American back-office operations have merged and "there is a big drive at the moment to put our new desktop technology on board," Radcliffe said.
Other initiatives include integrating its online booking products, including its hotel booking tool and HRG Online, with other self-service reservation applications, as is being done for one large U.K.-based client. Such technology can accelerate system consolidation and enable more standardization across products, according to Radcliffe.
"When self-service reservation technology first came on board, a lot of people shrieked eureka and started to put it in, then in two or three years time realized it was costing them more to have highly paid employees do what our lower-paid employees can do for them," Radcliffe said. "This is the issue where we have to get better as an industry in standardizing some of our products and get the message to clients that there is a common base here with common minimum standards."