FOR MUCH OF 2011 mobile was the next big thing in corporate travel management. We were told that smartphones and tablets would give us access to apps that would not only save us time and money, but would enhance the travelling experience.
Our executives would be able to book travel and accommodation from approved suppliers wherever in the world they were. They would be able to use their mobile phones as boarding cards, and buy goods and services using smartphones as credit cards.
Indeed, mobile has the potential to revolutionise corporate travel. Yet, so far, little appears to have happened: there’s still a great deal of talk about mobile, but ask most corporate travel managers and they will tell you that they are doing very little with mobile.
So why is this? What needs to change for all this promise to be fulfilled, and perhaps most importantly, when can we expect to see reality catching up with the hype?
The reality
“Last year everyone was asking us what we were doing on mobile and when they could start using it,” says HRG technology director Paul Saggar. “So, we looked into it and developed a service – but when we went back to those travel managers, their enthusiasm had cooled significantly.”
Speak to the travel managers themselves and there is without doubt a lack of urgency around mobile. “This is a project which has been put on hold,” says Mervin Moonien, travel consultant at the Bank of New York Mellon; while Geoff Allwright, UK head of travel at aerospace giant EADS UK, says: “We are not using mobile devices for travel because our business is not so on-demand.” And Judith Gledhill, UK travel manager at energy firm E.on UK, adds: “Unfortunately, mobile technology is something we haven’t yet embraced.”
In fact, it is not only the travel department where this is happening. In August 2011 software firm Filemaker surveyed 400 information workers across a range of sectors about the use of mobile devices in their workplace. Some 40 per cent are not permitted mobile access to work resources and, in a fairly damning statistic, 47 per cent said that the technology in their personal life is more effective than the technology at work.
Control and costs
The big question is, why are corporates refusing to embrace mobile technology? Antony Elliott, head of corporate sales at HRS UK, has a theory: “Many travel managers fear integrating apps into their service as it could lead to travellers booking off-programme and at rates which aren’t as good as those available through traditional booking methods,” he says. “The majority of apps are not built to be corporate tools so don’t offer the negotiated rates or visibility that corporates rely on.”
Yet, there is no shortage of apps designed for the business travel marketplace – there are apps to book hotels and manage transfers; apps for flight boarding, hotel check-in, and contactless payment... In fact, apps should give travel managers greater, not less, control of their programmes, and most are aware of this.
Some believe that travel managers are worried about roaming costs, but Fabien Gustafsson, general manager of the Freemove Alliance, a consortium delivering Orange, Teliasonera, Telecom Italia and T-Mobile services to corporates, reports that these roaming costs are now half what they were a couple of years ago. He does not believe that they now present a barrier to corporate buyers.
Indeed, Richard Neale, chief technology officer at Esselar, a firm that specialises in connecting smart devices to corporate networks, points out that mobile-device management can actually help with managing roaming costs. “Travel managers can implement a preset policy that either sends a pop-up message warning a user their data allowance is about to be reached, or restrict access if the limit is exceeded,” he says.
App quality
A greater concern for many is the perceived low quality of the app market. Neil McCrossan, chief executive of Nexus Vehicle Management, says: “The main thing that has prevented more widespread adoption of apps in the business travel market is simply that most of them have been too difficult to use or have had limited functionality.”
Kjell Kolstad is director of strategic business development at Blackberry manufacturer RIM. He believes this lack of quality is in large part due to the fragmentation of the app market. It costs very little to develop an app, but it costs much more to develop a truly useful one.
“One of things we are keen to address is the app fragmentation in the mobile market,” says Kolstad. “Users have to download many apps, each delivering separate benefits. This is what we’re trying to tackle with Blackberry Travel, a single app that delivers many functions.”
Security issues
Yet there are now many high-quality apps, and most corporate travel managers will tell you they are keen to use them. The greatest obstacle they face is in fact the IT department. Saggar at HRG says: “Almost all those people who were so keen a year ago had been stopped by their IT departments who were worried about security. One major bank we were talking to has gone as far as prohibiting any external apps on company mobiles.”
David Vine, senior director at expense management firm Concur, agrees: “What we’re hearing from customers is they’re worried about providing staff with travel and expense apps, because they’re concerned they won’t receive proper IT support and worry about data security.”
Those IT departments are right to be concerned. According to the IBM X-Force 2011 Mid-year Trend and Risk Report, “exploits targeting vulnerabilities that affect mobile operating systems will more than double from 2010”. As the global mobile workforce is expected to reach more than 1.19 billion by 2013, this trend will only continue and, with market intelligence firm IDC stating that at the end of 2011 almost half of mobile devices used in the workplace were employee-owned, IT departments are increasingly nervous about rogue mobile devices and apps.
At the end of January, IBM introduced new software to help tackle this problem. Bob Sutor, vice-president of IBM Mobile Platform, says: “IBM Endpoint Manager for mobile devices helps organisations support and protect the growing mobile workforce. They can remotely set policies, identify potential data compromises and wipe data off the devices if they are lost or stolen”
Development
In the months ahead we can expect to see a raft of similar security developments hit the market and, as they are deployed, they will do much to allay fears about mobile devices on the corporate network. We can expect to see some important advances on the mobile devices themselves.
For example, Samsung product manager Phil Sears says: “There has always been a lack of connectivity between mobile devices and desktop monitors, televisions and notebooks. The introduction of mobile high-definition link connectivity will make it easy to transfer the content from your mobile phone to a monitor.”
He continues: “By connecting a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse to their smartphone, which are both highly portable, they can recreate a PC environment in spaces such as the home, transport hubs, hotels – practically anywhere.”
By their very nature, mobile devices should allow travel managers to track the location of their employees. James Irvine is business development manager at tracking specialist Track24. He says: “This can be helpful in ensuring employee safety, and it need not be too intrusive. Employees can simply have an app on their phone, which they can use in an emergency or when travelling to a high-risk-area.”
Gary Hance, IT director at travel management company ATPI, believes the much-vaunted near field communication (NFC) will eventually have an important effect on business travellers. “I like the idea of NFC allowing a traveller to simply swipe a phone at the boarding gate to gain access to the plane, with no need for a boarding card,” he says.
Integration
However, perhaps the most important development in the mobile market over the next 12 months will not be in security or devices, however important they might be – it will be in the integration and standardisation of multi-channel systems.
American Express Business Travel technology boss Michel La Bianca says: “Achieving corporate implementation and user adoption is essentially about how you link the various components of a mobile travel solution together. You need a data feed that gets all computer systems involved in a travel reservation talking to each other in a common language – that is what corporates need to do internally. Externally, they need to be supported by the travel industry delivering information, on, say, a late gate change at the airport, in a timely manner and through the most useful channel to the traveller. US airlines lead the field in this area, but enhanced, standardised and regulated international processes for all carriers and airports would be very welcome.”
Saggar at HRG agrees. “Travel managers don’t want a range of different products; they want a multi-channel solution,” he concludes. “They should be wary of app vendors with products that promise lower costs, greater efficiencies and enhanced traveller experiences. A single app might provide all that, but a complete solution that delivers that across all channels is a far better bet in the long run.”