Cisco has made some big changes in 2015—partnering with Sabre
to create a complete booking solution, building its own mobile application and
introducing virtual travel centers to its Europe, Middle East and Africa hub—all
of which have improved the traveler experience.
For its first mobile tool, Cisco wanted an end-to-end solution,
senior global travel manager Carlos Almendros told BTN, and the existing functionality of Sabre's GetThere didn't fit
the bill. “We didn’t implement a
mobile solution right away because it only had hotel and air capabilities,”
Almendros said. “And when our mobility teams looked at it, it was really quite
clunky.”
In the second half of 2014, Cisco began working with Sabre
to develop the next generation of capabilities for GetThere's mobile-optimized
website. Sabre already was in the process of updating its mobile platform—accessible
on PCs, laptops, tablets and smartphones—but GetThere president Yannis Karmis said Cisco’s input added
marketplace clarity and an understanding of what truly mattered to travelers. “[Cisco’s]
travel team also facilitated a broader collaboration between Sabre’s technology
team and Cisco’s technology experts,” he said.
The companies shared feedback and performed tests to improve
the platform, according to Almendros. Developing a tool that maintained policy
controls and program elements while giving the traveler an elegant user
experience proved a challenge. “Cisco’s expectation was an ‘and’ not an ‘or’—not,
‘How do I make a trade off,’ ” Karmis explained. “Getting teams aligned on this
can’t be an exercise in making trade-offs. It has to be about finding ways to
deliver on the value proposition.”
The effort paid off. The new platform, available to all
Sabre customers, adds car booking to air and hotel booking capabilities, plus an
improved user interface.
Cisco also went a step farther for its own travelers and
created a downloadable Cisco Travel Network app, which enables employees to
book car, air and hotel through one log-in. “It was very intuitive for
employees to recognize that it was an approved app and distributed in the Cisco
app store,” Karmis said. “That very quickly drove employee adoption of the solution
and made it very easy for them to access, as before it was convoluted to access
the mobile platform [through the Web].”
Cisco deployed the app to more than 70 countries, and Karmis
said the amount of time for a Cisco traveler to book a round trip with air,
hotel, and car decreased from 20 minutes to a range of five to seven minutes. “We got high customer satisfaction,
started seeing good utilization,” Almendros said. “The other win was
that Sabre now has a much improved mobile app that will be better not just for
Cisco but for all customers.”
Virtual Offices
Almendros is accustomed to taking on such global projects. Cisco
services 98 countries, and he has consolidated 91 percent of booking volume
into three hubs in recent years. The Americas hub services Canada, Latin
America and the United States. The Asia/Pacific hub handles Australia, India,
Singapore and New Zealand, and the Europe, Middle East and Africa hub incorporates
37countries.
Additionally, after Almendros used Cisco's own telecommunications
equipment to empower Americas travel agents to work from home in 2013, the
company introduced similar virtual travel centers to its EMEA hub in 2014.
The virtual travel centers in the Americas “enabled Cisco to
move all agents from Cisco premises and reduce internal real estate costs,”
Almendros said. “Additionally, [we experienced] increased operational
efficiencies and productivity, as these agents spend less time commuting to
offices.” In the EMEA effort, Cisco similarly reduced
its internal real estate costs but also reduced its agent roster from 30 to 18.
Now that both are virtual, Cisco can shift calls to the overseas
hub when the U.S. hub experiences increased phone volumes owing to weather or
other challenges.
Almendros' next step is to introduce the virtual-office
concept to the Asia/Pacific hub, which may prove trickier. “Technology plays a
big part in this," he said. "In places like India, it’s not so easy
to do because there are broadband and phone challenges. Service providers there
have regulations around domestic and international calls.”