TECHNOLOGY STRATEGY
Companies need to bear in mind four
factors when considering their technology strategy, says Boatwright: culture, baseline, capability and business imperative. “If I go to a company like Facebook,
they have a fast-moving culture and they want to adopt things quickly. At the other end of the spectrum, you might have the royal household, which is aware from a professional standpoint of technology but is culturally not an early adopter but a follower of technology,” he says, adding that neither of these is a Hillgate client. He says the more traditional organisa-
tion would probably have a “desk-toppy” environment, whereas “the likes of Facebook would have a ‘mobile-first’ culture and you are looking at things like wearables”. This translates directly into tech strategy. If you are a Facebook-type organisation, then you are used to biweek- ly release schedules for tech updates and you are probably already thinking about virtual reality and artificial intelligence. But at the other end of the cultural spec- trum, moving from single-digit percentage
online booking tool adoption to 25 per cent might be your strategy. Knowing where you are today with technology, your baseline is always going to be important to understand what is feasible. If you are a mobile-first company, you may well allow employees to bring their own devices to work; at the other end of the scale, you may have very few corporate mobiles and don’t have a mobile strategy. “Your roadmap starts from this baseline,” says Boatwright. On the question of capability, he points
out: “Nine times out of ten, where strategy falters is on internal capability. They need to ask what technology they are going to be comfortable with, and also how many projects they have that are ongoing and whether they have the capability to work on another project.” For example, if you are undergoing an upgrade of your enterprise platform, the chances of introducing new technology into travel is likely to be slim. The final pillar in all of this is the over-
arching business imperative. Boatwright shares the example of a professional ser-
vices company that charges back travel to its clients. “If they are able to reduce the cycle between paying for travel and charging customers from 90 days to 30 that is no longer a travel issue but a finance one,” he says.
DRIVING INNOVATION The pharma buyer says one element of her company’s technology strategy is trialling disruptive technologies, particularly trav- eller-centric ones that can reduce admin. “We have never had a programme for
the medical reps who travel in cars and trains around the country visiting doctors. That has never been tackled. We have the figures to show that if we can take a few minutes of admin time out of the day of each sales rep then this can have a significant effect on the revenues of the company as a whole,” she says. “It is important to be disruptive. I would
be embarrassed to miss out on a big trend or something super-cool. You need to keep yourself relevant in your organisation and you do that by driving innovation.”
Parexel’s technology strategy (continued)
(continued from p85) Core level
• Consolidate to a single TMC globally
• Implement travel profile management tool
• Have a single HR feed for profile data
• Introduce an online booking tool strategy
• Introduce company cards (business travel account
or lodge/ghost cards) and corporate credit cards
• Carry out a traveller satisfaction survey
• Establish a travel intranet page
Basic level
• Implement an online, real-time reporting tool
• Implement an online expense management tool
• Establish credit card feeds into expense tool
• Online training
BUYINGBUSINESSTRAVEL.COM
• Implement risk management tool
Advanced level
• Integrate e-invoices into expense tool
• Allow OCR receipt capturing
• Consider outsourced sourcing tools for air and hotel
• Implement meetings management tool
• Introduce mobile apps for booking & expense,
ground transportation, trip information and corporate credit card and virtual card Master level
• Trial chatbots
• Introduce virtual credit cards (with level 3 data)
• Personalisation of trip offerings
• Multichannel access (not just GDS)
This roadmap means the company uses robust
reporting data to drive decisions. The Parexel technology
journey shows a migration from desktop to mobile and many follow a similar route. “We have taken everything we have done on desktop to a laptop and now we are taking it to a mobile phone,” says Park.
“The master level is where
we are at the moment. We are moving into trialling chatbots and virtual cards to get rid of plastic. Our technology goal is to have 80-90 per cent of total trip expense on a company paid payment method, whether corporate card or business travel account.” A key part of the Parexel
travel programme strategy is to host the technology externally. “We focused on external-hosted solutions
so there is minimum internal integration needed into our IT environment,” he says. Park is not convinced that TMC super apps are the way to go for large companies and says that adding a few more apps to the average 20 to 40 that most users have on their devices is not a problem.
“Development of apps is exponential, not linear, and for a TMC to stay ahead with a superapp would involve constant reconfiguration, which is not necessarily a financially good decision. We would rather offer ten apps to the traveller and they will always be up to date.” Ultimately, Park has two mantras that inform his approach. “Always act global and keep a personal service mindset,” he says.
BBT January/February 2018 87
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