Risk has rewards in fickle field of corporate travel

By MICHAEL FOREMAN

People who work in the corporate travel industry could be forgiven for thinking their clients are a fickle breed. While most leisure travellers stick to their original plans, on average, a business travel booking is altered 2 1/2 times before departure.

For the travel agent, even a seemingly simple flight change can involve changes to hotel reservations and car rental arrangements, while the client shoulders the administrative burden of renewing authorisations, expense arrangements and finance.

These are the sorts of problems Darrin Grafton, managing director of Auckland-based Interactive Technologies, and his business partner, Bob Shaw, know all too well.

Their company has been developing software for the travel industry since 1992, and now has more than 1000 customers here and in Australia.

While its existing products, such as Travelog and Serko, had made Interactive Technologies the local market leader in its field - Mr Grafton estimates that 63 per cent of all corporate travel bookings in New Zealand are made using its software - last year the company decided to develop Serko Online, a travel management system based on the latest internet server technology.

Interactive Technologies soon realised that what corporate users wanted was something that would act as an extension of the travel agents' systems.

The company began to design a system that would be hosted on the agents' servers but which could be accessed by corporates, who would be able to make bookings directly in real time.

"We began by drawing up a workflow model that included everything from authorisations, finances, ERP [enterprise resource planning], management reporting, and a few bells and whistles like links to mobile phones, and we built Serko Online on top of that," says Mr Grafton.

When development started last September, Interactive Technologies took a critical decision to base Serko Online around Microsoft's .NET strategy.

Mr Grafton says this was a bit of a punt because .NET was little more than vapourware at the time. But it was a shrewd choice. By supporting Microsoft's implementation of XML, Biztalk and SOAP, it has been very easy for Serko Online to exchange data with a range of third party .NET aligned software, including SAP's ERP systems, evolution e-procurement, and ANZ e-business services.

But there have been problems.

"Linking into the banking systems was more complex than we had originally envisaged. A lot of politics is involved and accreditation can take a year to go through. We ended up using third party consolidation companies. They have already got the links with the banks and we just link into them.

"We also had some difficulty with the type of direct connection we were making through to the airline systems. At that time no other company in the world apart from ourselves and a Scandinavian airline had done this before."

Interactive Technologies launched Serko Online last month, although some customers have had access to the system since January.

Mr Grafton says some travel agents have won new accounts by making pitches based on the specification alone, including Auckland-based Atlantic and Pacific Travel, which has picked up $20 million worth of business in this way.

The Serko Online package is marketed locally and internationally by Access Interactive in Auckland and by Amadeus in Australia. Sales have been encouraging.

Mr Grafton says overseas sales are still quite low. But he believes Serko Online will take the company into the US market.

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