THE BUSINESS TRAVEL MAGAZINE I 39 The Review THE TECHNOLOGY ➔ Suppliers embracing mobile solutions
THERE’S a recent piece of Morgan Stanley research that tells us that in about three year’s time the number of people using a mobile connection to access the internet will catch up with the numbers using desktop computers, writes Mike Swindell. The study also shows that while
the two methods of internet access reach parity in 2013, growth for the mobile sector continues steeply through 2015 while desktop access plateaus out. It is a graphic reminder of a
trend that the corporate comm- unity knows almost subliminally but has yet to work out how it can be effectively harnessed as part of the business travel toolkit. HRG technology and product development director Paul Saggar says, “We talk to our corporate customers today and pretty much all of them say they want a mobile solution but when you ask them what they want, I don’t think we’ve had anyone come back with a definitive list of requirements.” While HRG is not one to be jumping on bandwagons, it has recently announced a mobile technology partnership with Sabre Travel Network to bring the TripCase mobile application to its corporate clients. TripCase is already out in the market as a leisure application for users of mobile devices such as the iPhone, BlackBerry, Android and Windows Mobile, offering a range of functions such as live flight tracking with flight departure and gate status alerts, one-click view of the user’s itinerary and destination information including hotels near airports and local weather reports. But HRG is not simply translating the current leisure content into a business context and pushing it to clients. It is currently conducting a three- month pilot project with corporate clients that cover the Asia/Pacific, Europe, North America and Latin America regions. “The purpose of the pilot programme is to identify the
features that are key to our customer base,” says Saggar. There may also be features within TripCase that clients want to turn off or to modify – for example, the semi-social networking capability that allows travellers to share their trip information with others. “An organisation may decide
from a security point of view that they don’t want their people to share details of their trip or broadcast their whereabouts,” explains Saggar. “We may decide that this is a feature we will offer with a switch that can be
“The corporate community cannot ignore the mobile channel and is working to bring in early applications”
turned on or
off by clients as they see fit.” While the corporate version of TripCase will deliver all the usual airline and airport alerts to travellers during the course of a business trip, HRG
will also be able to modify itinerary details and lodge them with TripCase so that a traveller will always have the latest version available to them on their mobile devices whenever they log in. The pilot programme will also
see HRG test out a range of other messages that can be pushed out to travellers on the road. These are likely to include security alerts generated through HRG’s advisor Red 24, while value added information might include travel policy reminders at destinations where the company might have local arrangements, such as with taxi companies, or a set of instructions a company wants its travellers to follow. “We’ve asked for a degree of personalisation from TripCase for our customer base and during the pilot programme there are things we would want to explore and maybe extend,” says Saggar. The development of TripCase for corporate use is one of a number of initiatives that the travel management company has undertaken to embrace mobile technology. It already offers TripPass, an HRG proprietary product that allows travel managers or other corporate travel approvers to use their mobile devices to evaluate planned trips and either approve or decline them. And the TMC is also working on developing its own mobile applications as an extension to its Universal Super Platform which hosts HRG iSuite and HRG Online.
“I’m not suggesting that we are building a complete mobile booking engine but we’d like to get something out there that is a mobile version of our iSuite portal,” says Saggar. “We use iSuite to aggregate information from various systems that bring in details about travellers’ profiles as well as send out travel alerts. It hosts company news, policy information, supplier information and links to other applications including HRG Online and third parties such as GetThere. “We see a first phase develop- ment being a mobile version of iSuite – the same stuff via a different channel,” say Saggar. HRG is also looking at the possibility of adding mobile booking functionality for hotels, backed up by the TMC’s strength in the sector with technology such as the HotelBooker tool. Saggar says that HRG backs
up the industry view that the corporate community cannot ignore the mobile channel and is working to bring in early applications. But as smart phones and other mobile devices continue to develop, it is certain that they will carry more and more useful business functions – it is just that no one is quite clear yet as to what they will be.
48 I THE BUSINESS TRAVEL MAGAZINE
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