The Knowledge > Supplier perspective Why corporate travel technology must…
Anthony Drury HEAD OF UK, AMERICAN EXPRESS GLOBAL BUSINESS TRAVEL Anthony is responsible for strategy development and growth for the UK business, focusing on delivering business travel management services to companies of all sizes. He joined American Express in 2002 and has held a range of sales and leadership positions across the globe. Prior to his current role, he was the vice president and head of sales for Europe and before that for Asia- Pacific, where he was responsible for developing client acquisition strategies across a variety of industries and sectors as well as leading the regional sales teams.
THE ADOPTION of mobile technologies is accelerating globally in all aspects of business and personal life. Mobile no longer refers just to cell phones, but any device that can be taken with you on-the-go. The services offered on devices such as smartphones and tablet computers, and the technologies driving those services, are evolving as fast as the devices themselves. No 21st century industry can afford to simply watch, wait and then react to requests for mobile services. The corporate travel community must constantly seek to anticipate the industry’s needs and the traveller’s needs, driving change and exceeding customer expectations. Meeting that objective is easier said
“Mobile
than done. People become accustomed to certain standards when travelling, whether using a much-loved app to find the best restaurant in an unfamiliar city or receiving a vital alert highlighting a last-minute itinerary change. If those high standards of personal travel service cannot be matched in their corporate lives, employees may turn to trusted consumer services for their travel needs. Corporate travel managers who dismiss this possibility do so at their peril. The number of travel bookings and other travel and expense management tasks carried out through mobile devices may once have been small. Now, however, that trickle has become a flood. Unless corporate travel departments offer high-quality mobile
technologies are playing a key role as travel depart- ments become increasingly focused on duty of care”
travel services that are sexy enough for their travellers to have no need or incentive to use other tools, high numbers of costly policy breaches – which could result in high numbers of angry emails from the CFO – are certain to follow. The providers of mobile corporate travel services and
technologies must, therefore, win the hearts and minds of business travellers by proving their offering to be at least the equal of their consumer counterparts. Data delivery, for example, must be sufficiently simple and rapid to ensure real-time value to a traveller who, by
OUT DO ITS CONSUMER COUNTERPARTS Anthony Drury, American Express Global Business Travel's head of UK, urges the industry to embrace mobile technology to create a more traveller-centric corporate world
definition, often needs information fast in order to respond to a changing situation, such as a flight cancellation. Equally, the user interface on corporate mobile products must be as intuitive as their consumer equivalent. Mobile technologies are also playing a
key role as corporate travel departments become increasingly focused on ‘duty of care’. Corporate travel departments must deliver the best possible support to stranded staff, and mobile tech- nologies are central to that process. Better yet, travel departments need to deliver pre-emptive support to help staff avoid being stranded in the first place, providing advance warning of a potential airline strike, for example, to allow a Plan B to be executed. Corporate travel departments also
need to ensure staff can maintain the best possible lines of communication when affected by events which damage or even obliterate infrastructure, such as the Japanese tsunami. Again, mobile technologies are critical, perhaps even life-saving, when natural disasters strike. However, the travellers themselves must still be at the heart of the process. There must be proactive user ‘buy-in’ to the adoption of geolocation technology on mobile devices. But companies also need to
avoid the risk that carrying out well- intentioned traveller tracking for duty of care purposes appears instead to be somewhat Orwellian. Advances in mobile technologies need
to be backed by industry-wide support. For example, the technological capability to provide travellers with news of a late gate change to their mobile phone is only useful if that information arrives in a timely manner. Airlines need to cooperate with travel industry partners, including travel management companies, to ensure the necessary new data is delivered as rapidly and efficiently as possible. US airlines lead the field in this area, but enhanced, standardised and regulated international processes for all carriers would be very welcome. Mobile technologies will be a driving
force in the new, traveller-centric world. The buyers and sellers of corporate travel services need to acknowledge and reflect that fact, deploying high-quality, enterprise-wide mobile solutions, or risk losing control, not least, of costs. If business people are unhappy with
the services and requirements of their corporate travel suppliers, they will turn elsewhere for support. In the world of mobile technology, the power is, quite literally, in the hands of the traveller.
14 I THE BUSINESS TRAVEL MAGAZINE
BIGSTOCKPHOTO.COM
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