Thinking Big with Smaller Partners

Fazal Choksi carries in the back of his mind a leadership principle ingrained in him from his time working for online shopping giant Amazon.

“Think Big,” said Choksi, Ciena’s director of indirect procurement, which includes travel. “To me, that means doing now what you want to see in the future.”

Sometimes, however, “Think Big” requires the kind of collaboration and innovation that happens with smaller partners. So when the time came a couple of years ago for Ciena to review its travel technology partner and travel management company, Choksi—whose company spends $35 million to $40 million annually on travel—took a leap into a smaller pond.

“We were one of their first clients,” Choksi told BTN about Ciena’s move to Mark Walton’s new venture Solutions Travel, which at the time was something of a spinoff from his more traditional Options Travel, which Choksi described as “a Concur house.” Ciena was looking for something different—something that would be more agile in the hands of the travel manager and, importantly, one that would offer one global instance for the multinational company, rather than having to cascade a travel program across multiple platform instances.

“That was one of our biggest pain points with our previous TMC; it wasn’t on a unified platform. So I couldn’t get data in real time,” said Choksi. “The second piece was content. At the time, FCM was not ready for New Distribution Capability and they were not flexible in bringing in content.”

Unified data and the ability to turn content on and off for the program are pillars in what Choksi sees as the fundamentals of future travel programs. But he also required service. “You cannot have a travel program based only on technology; you have to have the service piece,” he said.

Solutions Travel offered that via its partnership with and technology stack from industry newcomer Spotnana, which had already been backed by managed travel technology heavyweight Steve Singh. But, said Choksi, Solutions as a smaller player didn’t have a presence in every location Ciena needed. And that could have been a stumbling block.

What’s Old Is New Again?

“Initially, we wanted a presence in every single location from our TMC,” he said. “But then you think about it. … If I was running a business, would I want presence everywhere? And the answer was an overwhelming, ‘No.’”

The thinking hearkens back to the early 2000s, when travel program globalization was the going currency in innovation. The wisdom prevailed that the more “owned” locations a TMC had, the better equipped it would be to offer unified service and platforms. On the other hand, local providers could offer local content and cultural relevance for program users. What created a different lens for that argument today, Choksi realized, was that if the technology stack could drive true unification, the “local presence” issue was just noise.

“It really doesn’t matter who the local ticketing organization is,” he said. That is managed by the local partner TMCs using Solutions’ pseudo-city codes to book travel. “My contact is still Solutions, so I’m getting the best of both worlds—local expertise but a global TMC.” And, he said, he gets clean data and that’s what he needs to operate a successful program.

“I’m a very data-driven person,” said Choksi. “And this is real-time data; like, it’s immediate. Once it’s booked, I have access to it.”

That data not only gives Choksi full confidence when he’s negotiating with suppliers, but also allows him to manage his program between those negotiations, using data-based decisions executed across the program with self-service tools.

“I can in seconds allocate any of my suppliers to be my most preferred, preferred, least preferred or no designation at all,” he said in terms of configuring the outward presentation of suppliers to program users. He can also, he said, self-serve messages to users to inform them of priorities or critical issues happening that may impact their travel bookings.

“If, god forbid, there is a terror attack or some other event that poses risk to my travelers, I have the ability in seconds to turn off bookings to impacted markets. These changes happen globally—not just in one market “instance”—and I can then message travelers about what is happening. I can do this all myself based on the intelligence I have and I don’t have to send a ticket to my technology provider or TMC and then wait to have it executed across the program.”

Self-service tools also allow Choksi to add and adjust policies and, overall, create a more agile program that changes as Ciena’s requirements change.

Beyond Self-Service to Collaboration & Growth

Making bold moves with new providers is one way to push managed travel towards the future, but that process doesn’t begin with perfection. Choksi has been a collaborative partner to both Solutions Travel and to Spotnana, pushing them to provide better and more efficient capabilities, as well as the opportunity to grow.

He gives the example of goods and services tax invoices in India that have needed work in the current system. “We’ve been at the forefront of designing that that aspect of the tools and the [required] relationship with a local third party. I think that has helped them create something that will be useful to other clients.”

Have access to leadership across Solutions Travel and Spotnana has been key to success. “I would never have that at a larger TMC, but here, I have access to Mark and we can really work together.” He said that was similar with Spotnana’s leadership team as well. “Obviously, I don’t call them every day or month, but I know they are there.”

Solutions Travel, in the meantime, has grown into a profitable company on its own and has expanded through partnerships to more than 40 markets—often driven by the requirements of Ciena. The company gained a controlling investment from Israel-based Talma Travel Solutions, executed through its North America subsidiary Brickell Travel, as well as from Latin America-based travel and tourism company Consolid Global Travel Solutions.

Next steps for Ciena? With access to real-time data, Choksi is looking to tap artificial intelligence at his firm to offer voice activated reporting out to program stakeholders and is even considering voice activated bookings. "So much is possible now," he said.