L Durocher's Blog

The key to developing a good strategy is to ask yourself “where do you want to be in five years?” and then making choices necessary to drive towards this future. While I really can’t predict the shape of business travel in 2015, I do think that the face of this business will change, and change dramatically, if the prevailing trends in technology, travel and traveler behavior continue. Specifically there are three technology themes I see as changing both how and what we deliver to our clients; personalized traveler centric servicing, more sophisticated data capture, and travel alternatives.

Traveler Is King: More Traveler Choices Enabled through Technology

I believe that individual traveler needs will come to the forefront in driving the design of our solutions. This traveler centric focus will be driven by several factors. First - mobile technology has improved to the point that we can identify where the traveler is and where he is going to be - and to send him context relevant, rich content to improve both his travel experience, and the cost effectiveness of his travel. As the airlines unbundle content we can also find better and more efficient ways of serving up this content to the traveler that don't require waiting in the queue to purchase at the airport. Second, as the travel experience gets more fraught with challenges, due to contracting capacity, security concerns, etc - our job will be to offset these disturbances by providing real time data and alternatives to the traveler to maximize her productivity on the trip - if we can prevent her ever leaving the office to go to the airport to catch a delayed or even cancelled flight, we've had a major impact on both his productivity and quality of life. Third, younger travelers are more savvy with technology than people of my era (I'm giving nothing away here -but lets just say there was no computer on my desk when I started working) - and we need to build servicing that not only keeps up with their expectations but takes advantage of their higher level of sophistication to provide a better experience for them and more cost savings for their employers.

Market Intelligence: More Isn't Better, Better is Better

Data has come a long way in this industry from the days where we worried about quality, completeness and timliness, again in accordance improvements in technology. As we build better, smarter, web service based applications we can more seamlessly provide data back through intelligent and efficient search technologies. These platforms, along with improvements in both travel and expense management technology, should allow for the first time for us to provide data, benchmarking and consulting that get not just at the spend related to the categories we've booked directly for our clients but the total trip spend, from door to door. The enhanced data sets will also inform more intelligent choices by our clients in how to manage their travel - to know which travel is related to building their business and which travel is optional - and to move closer to a world where they can calculate an ROI on their travel and meetings programs.

Good Travel Management May Mean Not Recommending Travel

Finally, I think travel alternatives will provide meaningful replacements for the first time to actually arriving in person. The newest versions of telepresence technology provide a much enhanced experience for the user, and are starting to approximate an in person experience. As service providers, our ability to provision and book this kind of technology for our travelers, and to identify trips that would be ideal to switch to telepresence needs to be a core part of the service we provide. We should be driving penetration of this technology even though it cannibalizes our traditional services, because it ultimately best fulfills what our customer needs. Clearly it will never replace fully the need to spend time face to face, it is a viable and necessary complement to travel. All in all we need to adapt and change as the technology and the travelers change. We could continue to optimize what we have done traditionally (and we do - because we still believe that having terrific offline servicing is the point of entry to even be in the business) but to quote Edward de Bono, "Removing the faults in a stage coach may produce a perfect stage coach, but it is unlikely to produce the first motor-car". What we do will continue to change, and with it we will also change.

More often than not, people outside the industry underestimate the complexity of business travel servicing. We juggle delivering millions of travel transactions across a myriad of connections while not only managing terabytes of data but also maintaining and protecting unique user data – all while delivering content that is live and accessible. This is not for the faint of heart. We are historically challenged by scattered applications which are both expensive and difficult to scale as they need to meet very specific local needs. With increasing demand for true globalization and customization TMC’s are faced with the challenge of knitting together rudimentary applications and providers in an attempt to provide tomorrow’s servicing with yesterday’s technology.

Technology is progressing rapidly, and behind the scenes, global distribution systems have slowly been investing to move to service-oriented platforms that will enable an entirely new set of capabilities. In addition, with the advent of more sophisticated mobile technology, unique traveler identification and mobile service delivery are becoming a reality.

One question we always focus on — how do we integrate existing services while anticipating others that aren’t yet conceived?

And our answer — through an adaptable open architecture that allows us to seamlessly ‘plug and play’ the infinite number of evolving services, content elements and functionalities that our customers need to stay current, safe and productive.

For some travel management companies (TMC’s) with large investments in legacy platforms, it has been harder to walk away from these choices. To keep these systems relevant, they have bubble-gummed and bolted on applications. For others, including us, adapting means a changed approach towards next-generation technology platforms that provide flexibility in delivering globalized provisioning of personalized service and access to infinite content through web based services. TMC’s that are forward thinking have been working in anticipation of these changes.

Today, information lives not in a mainframe, but on the web. It is no longer acceptable to deliver to hard coded applications built on monolithic architectures when customers seek solutions that are flexible and can be customized. Over the next 12 months our key focus at American Express Business Travel is establishing two foundational building blocks built around technologies like XML and Service Oriented Architecture. These two innovations will enable us to deliver personalized content and real time servicing to clients on mobile devices. In tandem, we’ve been working on platforms that will complement these offerings. As we approach the new year, I’m sure there are many more exciting ideas in store and many more twists and turns to keep us occupied along the way.

Lisa Durocher is the Senior Vice President of Global Marketing and Product Management for American Express Business Travel. Ms. Durocher joined American Express in 2002 as Global Vice President of Product Design and Management in Travelers Cheques and Prepaid Services (TCPS), where she designed and launched American Express Gift Cards, including expanding the business into the retail channel, Travellers Cheque Cards, and a paper product called Securefunds for use in economically unstable economies. Prior to joining American Express, Ms. Durocher spent the majority of her career in consumer-packaged goods with industry leader Procter and Gamble in Brand and General Management where she led a variety of businesses.