Nashville - On the job for nine months, American Express
Global Business Travel president Kim Goodman had much to discuss here last
month at The Beat Live. Among other topics addressed during an hour-long speech
and Q&A, she told attendees that no clients have asked Amex to facilitate
rogue bookings, stressed the importance of personal service in an age of
digitization and consumerization, explained changes within Amex's travel
organization and implored those looking for the next big thing in online
booking technology to catch their collective breath and first make sure that
current technology is used to its fullest.
"An online booking interface might show up through a
tablet. It might show up through a PC. I can't tell you how many people we talk
to that are looking at the next things, A, B and C," Goodman said.
"Before we get to the next thing, let me tell you what my list is: How
about we have a booking tool that has maximum up time? How about we have an
online booking tool that is frictionless so that I as a travel management
company don't have to have hundreds of people—which is what I have, hundreds of
people—dealing with things that fall out of the online booking tool because it
doesn't get totally completed? How about we have simple and easy user
interfaces? How about we have global consistency of those interfaces? How about
we have something that implements the policy seamlessly? How about we have
digital capabilities that exist today that do all that? And how about we also
work hard on adoption?"
That's not to say Goodman isn't intrigued by new
developments, "but we have to have the basics of this industry—including
digitization—work right and be effective before we move off to the races,"
she said. "Trust matters and dependability matters a ton."
And what of emerging mobile services like booking?
"Just like it's worked to keep [online booking tools] trustworthy,
effective, etc., mobile in our view will have to evolve that way," Goodman
said. "Do we want access to capability? Yes. Do we want it at the
sacrifice of management, of responsibility, of effectiveness and of policy? No,
we don't."
But when asked for her take on a prediction that by 2015
about half of all travel transactions would be made through mobile devices,
Goodman said it doesn't sound unreasonable. "The ability of online
[booking] to move to a different platform—and its not easy—makes the
opportunity for that number to be reasonably large reasonably soon," she
said. "What we don't want is a lot of fragmented functionalities and
capabilities that are not thorough and deep. We want global capability. I can't
tell you how many pieces of functionality my customers want. Is it available
worldwide? Is it even available in the top 15 countries? The answer generally
is no. People tell me, 'You are too slow on XYZ.' I can tell you why; we're
testing it inside out and forwards and backwards."
Mobile technology, of course, facilitates "rogue"
travelers in booking outside of preferred travel management channels, a
familiar behavior popularized and branded as "Open Bookings" by Amex
partner Concur.
Corporate customers, Goodman said, "ask me a lot of
things, but I have not had a single customer ask me, 'Could you please make it
easier for my people to do whatever they might like to do?' It just hasn't
happened. If you are a customer and that's what you want, please find me and
I'll stop saying that.
"What I do hear from them is: 'People are used to fast,
effective and available information. They are used to new techniques and
capabilities. I need to be relevant for that and I need to able to deliver
that. Therefore you need to think about your products and services evolving for
that.' "
As an example, she pointed to a "major global customer
based in Europe" who discussed with her how Amex could improve its
service. "He kept coming back to, 'I am working my tail off to negotiate
certain deals with certain providers. I need you to make sure those deals are
applied every time you book a ticket,' " Goodman conveyed. "He came
back to it so much I finally asked him, 'How many times in the last year had we
not done it?' The answer was three. That's how important it is to him."
Sounds sensible, but GDSX CEO Cindy Allen asked about the
times when travelers book elsewhere. "There is an undertone of 'help us
manage those things that already are unmanaged and pull them into this very
valuable travel management infrastructure,' " Allen said. "Do you
think that's a conversation that folks maybe are not having with you? Or do you
have a plan on that?"
Goodman clarified that yes, those "are topics that
people do discuss with us." Those discussions, she said, revolve around
how organizations view the strategic asset that is travel, methods to
incentivize travelers to follow policy and expense tracking through Amex
corporate cards. "Companies are different, so I am not saying everyone
should have a huge mandate or everyone should have a little one," Goodman
said. "You have to design it around your corporation."
Amex Travel's
'Fundamental' Change
In explaining the reorganization of American Express Global
Business Travel, Goodman, who came from Amex Merchant Services, said the change
is "fundamental" and stems from customer desire to see closer
coordination between the company's travel and payment divisions.
"We still have two business units: Global Corporate
Payment and Global Business Travel," she explained. "What is
different now is that, as the leader of Global Business Travel, I report into
[Bill Glenn] who leads the segment, so he's responsible for travel and he's
also responsible for payments. The customer has articulated to us the
opportunity, interest and need. 'You are booking it for us on one hand and you
are driving the payment, the statements and many times the reporting on the
other hand.' It's not the exact same thing, but these are two sides of pretty
much the same coin."
But why now? "There is a history of they're together,
they're not ... You don't want to get it wrong," Goodman continued.
"We probably tried to put it too close, probably like 10 years ago. We
need to make sure we are great in travel and great in payments, and that's the
phase we have come through. We believe we can take it to another level by looking
at both sides. The reason they still are two different business units is that
we are do not want to sacrifice excellence on either side. We want to make it
additive."
This report
originally appeared in The Beat.