Expert: Norman L. Rose - 12/17/2010

Question
What are the business drivers that makes companies operating in the above segments invest in IT?

Nature of IT initiatives embarked by companies operating in the Travel Distribution segments?

What are the key technologies that are being embraced as part of their IT initiatives?

Answer
IT in the business travel industry generally resides at the travel management company (TMC) or licensed directly by the corporation.  
From the TMC viewpoint IT investment centers around technology to increase the efficiency of the agent, manage mid-office quality control and accounting and capture and analyze data for policy enforcement and opportunities for additional savings.  
From the corporate customer view point - IT purchases generally involve corporate self-booking technology, data aggregation and business intelligence tools and expense management systems.  Self-booking reduces per transaction costs and increases compliance, data aggregation collects information from a variety of sources (multiple TMCs, supplier direct) and the BI tool helps analyze this information, expense management automates the expense reporting process and provides insight into actual corporate spend.
In the emerging tech category- TMCs and corporations are beginning to invest in mobile technology, initially to capture and manage disparate itinerary elements, but will evolve to act as a intelligent assistant to rebook and help the traveler while on the road. Corporate self-booking vendors and third parties such as TripIt provide this mobile technology today.