American Express Business Travel rolled out
the Intelligent Online Marketplace, a tool that enables corporate
travelers to book a range of services and enables the corporation
to manage those services.
American Express'
latest service option for U.S. corporate customers is a
private-label version of the Rearden Commerce Network, an online
tool for procuring services required by businesses, including
travel.
Rearden users can
book airport parking, ground transportation, dining, event tickets,
package shipping and audio and Web conferences in addition to air,
hotel and car.
American Express in
July took a minority stake in San Mateo, Calif.-based Rearden
Commerce, a company that was founded in 2000.
Since July,
American Express has quietly marketed the service and signed up 15
clients, said Andrew McGraw, senior vice president general manager
of North America for American Express Business Travel.
The system is being
deployed at American Express offices, he added.
The basic Rearden
system, branded to its users as the Rearden Personal Assistant,
provides travel-booking capabilities with links to all of the GDSs,
said Jeff Pulver, Rearden's vice president of marketing.
But Rearden is not
a travel agency. For fulfillment, Pulver said that Rearden has
always worked with travel management companies and will continue to
work with them.
American Express
has been one of the agencies providing fulfillment for Rearden
customers, McGraw said.
The unique aspect
of the American Express relationship, besides the agency's
ownership stake, will be American Express' active involvement with
the company by placing a representative on Rearden's board of
directors and through participation in a joint planning council for
ongoing product development, Pulver said.
The deal to make
the Rearden service American Express' next-generation booking tool
was two years in the making, according to McGraw.
During that time,
McGraw said that American Express was assessing the Web-based
technology platform and conducting customer focus groups to
determine client interest in the expanded buying and policy-control
options and their willingness to deploy the system.
The major payoff
for the corporate customer is the opportunity to control the 41% to
50% of travel-related spending that, to date, remains largely
unmanaged, said McGraw.
It is the Web, he
said, that makes it possible to focus on line items such as airport
parking and ground transportation. With the ability to track
spending on these items, excellent cost-saving opportunities could
present themselves, McGraw said.
On the big-ticket
side, travel managers can dictate which employees can purchase
business-class air tickets, long a familiar feature of corporate
policies.
With the new
system, managers also can control which employees are allowed to
ship overnight packages.
Pulver said the end
users see benefits, too.
For example, when
corporate travelers book air, the flight information is
automatically dropped into their electronic calendar. When a
package is shipped, the system advises the employee when it
arrives.
Other services
include notification about flight changes via cell phone, e-mail or
text messaging.
In the future,
McGraw said that the system will assist with expense reporting,
dropping spending data into a report template to save data
entry.
In addition, Pulver
said that Rearden Commerce's vision includes eventually taking the
service to clients outside the U.S.
"The goal is to
satisfy the American Express customer base," Pulver
said.
To
contact the reporter who wrote this article, send e-mail to Nadine
Godwin at [email protected].