Success Story: Global Financial Institution

A global financial institution with more than 200,000 business trips worldwide each year is PASS’s newest client for its Online Booking Tool (OBT). The challenge lies in the complex country-specific travel policies, as well as in achieving savings in millions by using intelligent corporate contract handling and high online adoption even for business class travellers. 

What is to be done if existing off-the-shelf systems are no longer able to meet the ever increasing demands of a company? The financial service provider was faced with this problem in relation to the Online Booking Tool of a leading provider that they had been using. “With the existing system it became ever more difficult to display our travel policies. We had to carry out time-consuming extra programming”, summarizes the travel manager responsible for technology at the financial institution. “Our aim was to implement software that we could independently maintain and that is open for further development without much effort.” 

Flexibility makes all the difference

In comparison to other Corporate Booking Tools, PASS Consulting Group’s product scored especially with their integrated rules engine. Thanks to the rules engine, the financial institution is now able to display their policies with complete flexibility and autonomy. “The modular principle also allowed us to choose specific system components out of the PASS Travel Framework to create our own tailor-made solution”, says the travel manager. PASS implemented the project together with an international team of 15 from the financial institution – including travel managers from England, Japan, Singapore, Australia and the USA. “For us, the challenge was to accommodate all the different country-specific requirements”, recalls Michael Strauss, Head of the PASS Business Unit Travel. “Often, in each country, companies implement a different corporate booking engine and then face limitations with standard solutions. Thanks to our framework based on reusable components, software generator and service-oriented architecture we could offer a cost-effective, tailor-made solution.”

"With the new OBT we have significantly increased our independence. Programming and adjustments which in the past required change requests, can now be completed in-house."

Travel Manager of the financial institution

Independence: a valuable commodity

PASS achieved a seamless integration of its business travel solution into the client’s system landscape. The financial service provider’s application and approval process is connected to the Online Booking Tool (OBT) via an interface. Bookings are loaded directly from the PASS booking system. After approval they are sent back with a PNR remark. There are further interfaces to back office systems such as finance and controlling. “With the new OBT we have significantly increased our independence. Programming and adjustments which in the past required change requests, can now be completed in-house”, emphasizes the client’s representative. This is due to the integrated rules engine, which – besides many other functions – automatically transfers all the travel policies to the booking system and affords the client the ability to write and change its own rules. In addition, there is flexibility regarding the service-provider, which, if necessary, can be seamlessly changed. Using PASS’s Travel XML API XX1, content and inventory from various providers can be coherently displayed in the OBT using an XML format. “The financial institution has been using our XX1-technology since 2002”, Strauss points out.

Keeping processes and costs under control

“We were able to accelerate the complete process chain – not least due to the extensive automation”, explains another representative who oversees global travel management at the financial firm. Currently there are approximately 11,000 users booking 200,000 trips per year through the OBT. “The bottom line is we were able to achieve tangible time and cost savings, emphasizes the travel manager.