In the name of ‘security’ and ‘saving cost’, big business is encroaching on every facet of their employee’s life, including the aspect of mobile telephony.
At the ACTE (Association of Corporate Travel Executives) ASPAC Regional Conference held in Singapore last week, a good number of participants gathered to listen to a panel that was discussing the application of mobile technology in corporate travel.
Imagine that you are on your next business trip abroad. You arrive at the airport and you get a text message from your company informing you which hotel you are staying at, with address information, and letting you know that your ground transportation awaits you. Or it lets you know how to get a cab, along with the expected fare to your hotel. As you approach your hotel, you receive another text informing you of the corporate room rate you should receive as well as what benefits the hotel should afford you, for example, free breakfast and broadband internet access.
Would that be bliss? You can finally do away with those scraps of paper. Well, it is reality for a small pilot group of Singaporeans and Europeans that work for Microsoft.
Microsoft is rolling out a corporate travel management system enabled with mobile technology that allows users not only to get notices akin to the above mentioned, but also allows a range of approvals for managers to approve their employees travel plans, while they themselves are on the road. Furthermore, in a limited sense, Microsoft expects to enable the traveler to book or change their itinerary through mobile applications.
By pushing information to their travelers, Microsoft expects to save costs by improving compliance. For example, the system, which is GPS enabled, can tell the company that an employee is two hours journey from the airport and in danger of missing their flight. A text is then generated to urge the employee to go immediately to the airport, so as not to miss their flight. If they do miss the flight, the rationale is that they will incur more cost by changing the flight, along with cancellation charges for hotel and ground bookings.
Georgie Farmer (above), Microsoft’s Head of Asia Travel Services, says that a survey of the focus group that is testing the product showed that 96% of them “love it”. Given their aptitude for technology, by nature of working for Microsoft, Farmer was surprised by the results. She thought that the group would be far more critical of the product. The testers also came up with new ideas to expand the range of services, many of which will be implemented.
Consequently Microsoft intends to roll out the product further, with the next test market being Australia, followed by India, which is their largest group with 5,000 corporate travelers.
