Going Big: Eric Bailey, BTN’s 2015 Travel Manager Of The Year, Combines Vision With Partnership

In the race for a seamless business travel experience, technology suppliers have been inching toward solutions. With the help of Microsoft’s Eric Bailey, a new set of tools—potentially game changing—will soon be available to the wider industry.

Bailey, global travel and venue group lead for the technology giant, has been something of a quiet visionary. While managing Microsoft’s 70,000-traveler program, Bailey initially built out his vision by working with interns on side projects.

“The problem with any new technology project,” he has learned, “is that eventually everything breaks.” Without constant maintenance, building and internally managing the perfect travel solution for Microsoft Travel was untenable—at least on the scale that would meet Bailey’s vision. “I’ve learned over time that we don’t really need custom-built solutions all the time. We need to get these things to the people who can help them grow.”

So he did. Watch him describe the process in his own words, and keep reading after the jump.

Forging partnerships with Amadeus, American Express Global Business Travel and a small tech firm called Tripism, Bailey gifted his vision to partners, leveraged internal Microsoft development funding, brought Microsoft technology experts to the table and made his travelers available to test prototypes throughout the process.

Why can Eric Bailey do this? It doesn’t hurt that he works for Microsoft, which has a vested interest in productivity and what can be achieved through the Outlook calendar, which counts hundreds of millions of users worldwide. Integrating that technology with corporate travel systems is a smart move for Microsoft and has potential to weave the technology even more tightly into the organizational fabric of its clients.

But the fact is that Bailey did it—before the projects attracted money and recognition and even before the technology was available to realize any of the vision.

“I’ve been working on these projects for about seven years,” he said. “It’s taken a lot of persistence and sometimes you have to put things on the backburner and be patient and wait for technology to catch up. But even before the technology was there, we had ideas about what we wanted to do, and what it might look like.”

Today, those ideas and visions are becoming reality and three new tools are poised for release to a larger market. Those seven years of patience and persistence are about to matter to a lot of business travelers.

The Tripism Collaboration

Imagine: A destination mapping tool that shows the location of all preferred hotel properties and car rental agencies in a city and that gives travelers the ability to add locations that are important to them—customer sites, restaurants, fitness centers. Built with the help of a handful of interns, Bailey tested the first prototypes of Microsoft Travel Companion in 2013.

Traveler participation was key. By adding review and recommendation capabilities, travelers created curated guides to their major travel markets with hotel reviews, restaurant recommendations and advice on how to get around.

“That’s one of the toughest parts for travelers,” said Bailey. “Because proximity is not necessarily a physical proximity; it’s the proximity of getting from one place to another.” If the traveler has guidance from peers on taking a train that stops right in front of the office versus renting a car, it saves travelers time and can save Microsoft money. “We wanted to create these connections,” said Bailey, “to make it easy for Microsoft travelers to get in, get around and get their work done.”

Fast forward to 2015 when Adam Kerr, founder of Tripism, cold-called Bailey to chat about mapping technologies and what Tripism was doing in the market.

“Tripism provides a platform to be able to share tips and hacks and recommendations so you can make your travel more effective,” said Kerr. “I’d seen a bunch of articles about what Eric had been doing. I thought it would be interesting to have a conversation with him.”

That conversation went well. Bailey’s mapping tool overlapped Tripism enough that it made sense to partner with the start-up and move Microsoft Travel Companion outside the organization. “It was a real serendipitous moment. He shared his screen and it was so similar,” said Kerr.

Tripism provides mapping functionality with preferred suppliers and can configure that to be shared among a specific corporate travel community. “But Eric identified early that this had to be an open platform in order to be successful—so that knowledge could be shared within organizations but also across organizations,” said Kerr. “That makes it stronger for everyone.”

With that in mind, ground transportation, restaurant reviews and other non-preferred information can be shared to the larger Tripism community. Tripism is currently working with Microsoft as well as a number of other companies in Europe for the initial rollout.

“New startups are relatively fragile, so when you have support from a visionary leader in the industry where you are working, it really helps.” Plus, said Kerr, “It’s pretty great to have Microsoft as one of our first clients.”

The Amadeus Collaboration

Recommendations and hacks are a great way to build communities—and a great way for less frequent travelers to learn about their destinations quickly. But especially for frequent travelers, Bailey set his sights on minimizing trip research and automating a booking process that he said can cost Microsoft employees up to two hours of working time for complex itineraries.  “That’s the golden ticket,” Bailey said.

It started with an RFP sent out to a variety of suppliers to solicit innovation ideas that would integrate with the Outlook calendar. Amadeus proposed a booking integration, and a partnership was born.

Working with Bailey, Amadeus has created a booking tool that lives within the Outlook environment. “It was a risk for us,” admits Florian Tinnus, head of corporate IT for Amadeus IT Group. “Amadeus takes a back seat in this arrangement, but it’s worth it.”

Bookings are initiated using the information embedded in calendar invites and appointments, and search returns only the most relevant choices to the user based on that information.

“We underestimate the calendar,” said Tinnus, citing the rich information that is housed there. “It has the user’s history and future, and their contacts.” For those who opt-in, the tool will learn about their habits over time and begin to see patterns and preferences, offering users more relevant search results based on their prior trips or even their colleagues’ trips if the user does not have anything similar.

“The idea is to add more intelligence,” said Bailey. “I also think that if you show people exactly what they want, it might not be what you want them to take. As the travel manager, if I demonstrate that I know what the traveler wants, but then show them a viable alternative that costs less or is with a preferred vendor and it leaves at the same time or offers the same comfort, I can do a better job of influencing behavior and driving compliance.”

“We call it ‘simplexity,’” said Tinnus. “And one of the best things about it is that there is no training. People understand how to use their Outlook calendar, they understand how to use this booking tool.” Reducing time on the booking process, gives those hours back to the corporation.

Amadeus plans a first-quarter 2016 rollout for this yet-to-be-named product. “We don’t have a name. We’ve been too busy changing the business travel experience,” said Tinnus. The team will need to think fast. Tinnus predicts that “in 12 to 18 months, it will become part of our offering on every RFP.”

The American Express Collaboration

American Express Global Business Travel has a 20-year relationship with Microsoft. The tech company recently renewed that relationship because the TMC has worked hard to deliver on Microsoft’s vision for its travel program. Next up: a rich itinerary product built into Outlook.

“We have workshops with Microsoft in terms of their vision for the travel program,” said Cheryl Donnelly, director Global Client Group for American Express Global Business Travel. “It was during one of those workshops that Eric said, ‘this is what we would like.’ We thought it was a great opportunity to take the Microsoft platform and the GBT data and bring them together.

The result of that opportunity is a data pull from the digital travel record for each trip. Rich itinerary information populates the calendar so that travelers need not leave Outlook to access critical travel details. Ability to check into the flight? Check. Access to weather updates? Check. Click to call the preferred car service? Check. When a change is made to the digital travel record, the tool updates the Outlook calendar.

The aggregated itinerary offers traveler notifications, mapping and directions, access to the agency and more. It’s another step in reducing the number of tools and apps a traveler needs to get the job of traveling done.

“Eric truly believes that Outlook is the tool people use, and offering them the opportunity to stay in Outlook facilitates a better experience,” said Donnelly. “He’s willing to do the hard work—to aggregate key stakeholders internally, get support of leadership, find travelers to test the product—so that he can use technology to become more efficient for the agents, for the travelers and for Microsoft.”

While American Express is guarded about specific plans to introduce the itinerary product to the larger business travel community, representatives say it’s coming.

“We are in discussions,” says Melissa Beauchamp, vice president for American Express’ Global Client Group. We can’t speak to specifics and there’s not a timeline at this point, but Eric has always been passionate about expansion to other customers, and we share that.”

Asked about the core objective that these technology collaborations share, Bailey does not hesitate: “What I am trying to demonstrate and what I want to get moving is the last piece. We can do door-to-door, we can get directions, but we need to integrate it. We can look at traffic, we can look at weather, but we need to bring this together—and it’s not easy. There’s a lot of technology integration there. But I think we’re going to start to see a lot of changes.”