THE BUSINESS TRAVEL MAGAZINE I 39 The Review THE TECHNOLOGY ➔ Next step in mobile booking takes off
IT WOULD be tempting to say that Concur's latest revelation is the pinnacle in the development of the corporate mobile application, writes Mike Swindell. Certainly, Fred Fredericks, Concur's vice-president of product development was tempted. But as a veteran techie, wise to the quantum leaps that can turn technology on its head at the blink of an eye, he reined in his enthusiasm. But only a bit. Concur has offered mobile applications for car rental and hotel reservations since 2009. It has an app that enables users to view their itinerary on their handheld device and is famous for its expenses app that allows users to photograph a receipt rather than collect and carry a file of dog-eared pieces of paper back to headquarters. Now, however, it has an app
that lets you book a flight. And this is not an application like all the leisure versions out there that display merchant product and then direct the user to the airline's website to book; this is an all singing, all dancing corporate tool that gets its information from the GDSs, sorts its display according to corporate travel policy and delivers the booking through a travel management company so that all that lovely management information data is parcelled up and saved.
The fact that you can do that on
your mobile phone or tablet is down to the fact that the gears and cogs whirring away behind the process are web-based. ”We have a web service that handles the air shopping and selling,” says Fredericks. ”We have another web service that gives you your itinerary and another one for car and another for hotel, so everything is
web service based,” he explains. ”What this means is that the mobile application does not have to do its own policies or its own configuration or its own anything,” Fredericks continues. ”The mobile application has
to present an interface to the traveller but it does not have
“This is an all singing, all dancing mobile application that gets its information from the GDS systems”
to invent the business logic.” Concur has also tailored its air app for each of the main smartphone and tablet devices – including the iPhone, iPad, BlackBerry and Android-based
phones – using the widgets already on each of those devices to give the application a native look and feel that users will be comfortable with. Fredericks says the new mobile application is probably faster than the web booking system because the information displayed on hand-held devices is necessarily leaner and meaner than it is on their big screen desktop or laptop brothers. But Concur is still trying to
up the speed from the version it showed off at the Global Business Travel Association's Denver convention – mainly
because it will be judged against zippy little leisure air booking apps that do not have to do half the work of the evolving corporate version. Having trimmed a second
here and half-second there off processing times, Concur was aiming to roll-out the simplest one-way and round-trip version of its corporate air booking app in the fourth quarter of this year. Multi-sector bookings are on the menu for early 2012. Also planned for development
next year is a European rail booking app using TheTrainline and SNCF sources, mirroring the application that Concur already offers with Amtrak across the Atlantic in the US. And all this comes for free.
”We try to work with our customers to deliver a mobile application that allows them to enforce their corporate travel policies while giving the users the power and flexibility to conduct business where and when they want,” says Fredericks. ”To charge for that would undercut that message.” Rajeev Singh, president and
COO of Concur, sums it up: “The ability to book an entire business trip, from air and rail to hotel and car hire – all from your mobile device, and all in policy – is now a reality.”
54 I THE BUSINESS TRAVEL MAGAZINE
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96