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1:30 Panel: M-commerce and travel – are you ready for the wireless revolution?
Kelly McConnell, Senior VP, Sales & Channel Operations,
Air2Web
(Moderator)
Karen Auman, Senior Product Manager Enterprise,
BroadVision
Matt Grandy, VP Business Development,
10Best.com
Simon Khosla, Director, Program Management Travel & Tourism,
SiemensBusiness Services
Alison Kane, VP, Product Strategy and Development,
Trip.com
Rachna Korhonen, Director of Travel Services,
Sonera CorporationKELLE McCONNELL
:This session is M-commerce and travel – are you ready for the wireless revolution? My name is Kelle McConnell. I’m Senior Vice-President of Sales & Channel Operations, for Air2Web. Air2Web is an infrastructure company thatdesigns, develops and hosts wireless applications for businesses.The panel, I am going to first introduce all the people in the panel, and then we will bringeach member of the panel up to introduce themselves, their company and their wirelessstrategy. The first person I will introduce is Karen Auman who is the Senior ProductManager for BroadVision, managing the one-to-one enterprise platform. She has thirteenyears experience in enterprise class software and has spent the last five years working inWeb and wireless enabled solutions. The next person on the panel to my right is MattGrandy and he is the Vice President in the Business and Development for 10Best.com. Next person to him is Simon Khosla and he is Director of Program Management Traveland Tourism for Siemens Business Services. Next I have Alison Kane and she is VicePresident of Product Strategy and Development for Trip.com, and last on the panel isRachna Korhonen, I probably messed that one up, but she is Director of Z Travel, TravelServices of Sonera Corporation USA. Headquartered in Finland, Sonera Corporation aleading provider of advanced wireless Internet telecommunications services worldwide.Miss Korhonen graduated with Bachelor of Computer Science from New YorUniversity, she manages a team of professionals in Bridgewater, New Jersey and serveson the management board of Sonera Z Travel. So, first up is Karen.
KAREN AUMAN
:Thanks, Kelle. I’ll just give a quick over-view. We were talkingearlier, if we all did our sort of standard over-view that would fill the whole time, so willtry not to do that. BroadVision, many of you know BroadVision but some of you do not.We build a suite of applications for business to business, business to consumer, businessto employee. Some of our customers in the travel industry are Forte Hotels, Air Miles, Air Lingus, etc, but we are probably best known for our business to consumer sites likeHome Depots, Sears, Stamps Club, etc.In the area of wireless, we have a number of initiatives. As we were sitting here, I think itwas Matt that muttered, “We are always wireless” and that is sort of our take also. All of our applications are wireless enabled and it is really a matter of what do you want to doand which technology you want to use. We have sort of two fronts going. On the business front we have a number of business partnerships to make sure that wireless runs
 
smoothly. Ericssons is a big partner of ours developing a scaleable, really robust platform primarily focused in Europe, not surprisingly, and then we announced a joint venture partnership with NT Dakomo which is the Japanese arm for the same idea of platformsand scaleable architecture.When you look at rolling out wireless on your site, on your travel site, from a technology perspective there is the area of establishing the pipes, establishing the connection and wesupport a wide variety of standards. We have a number of partnerships to do that, toestablish the pipes but we look at it as one step beyond that and the challenges of wireless. We think they are around performance because you see it at ten times increasein the demand on your site versus having a Web browser, at least at ten times so we think  performance is important. We think content management, having a very robust contentmanagement solution that is a business process and a technology so that you have just theright info. When you have such a small screen on your device, you have to have just theright info. And then the last area is personalization which is really what BroadVision isknown for and we think that those three areas combined are what you really need to havein an effective wireless strategy. If you are not delivering on that very small screen theexact right info to the right person at the right time then it doesn’t…..then you site willnot be successful. And with that and in the interests of time I will turn it over to Kelle.
KELLE
:Matt is up
MATT
:How was that lunch out in the 95 / 95 we have here in the South? Iactually personally had to pass on that. I’ve lived here too long so I know what it is likein the first week of September.10Best.com is a….we talk about wireless, we are a wireless data and service company; asit relates to travel our initial demographic is the frequent business traveler and essentiallywhat we try to do is deliver local information in a number of categories to people whotravel around the world. Our partners include from a wireless standpoint, we partner withour three mobile, people of that nature, wireless carriers around the world, location basedcompanies for example Air Flash, Signal Soft, people like that. Our travel companiesWorldSpan is a equity partner and a very strategic partner with our company and what isimportant about 10Best and I know about 10Best is that the delivery mechanism is whatwe believe differentiates us from the balance of quote City Guide Information out thereand the fact that we deliver in sets of ten, ten best. We kind of always joke around theoffices, Who would actually ever go and eat at the 11
th
best or 12
th
or 13
th
best restaurantor hotel or golf course or whatever? So, that is what we do.
SIMON
:It is always a bit difficult for me to explain Siemens in the US because I think most of you know the company from power stations and medical.Actually we are the third biggest supplier of GSN technology. Every third GSMapplication etc is from Siemens, so particular to the wireless scenario we go from the portable phone through the complete mobile infrastructure networks etc and we nowentering the application business and looking at various verticals that we want to targetand one of them is travel, and maybe why travel, it’s the other part of the story. We have
 
the second biggest travel budget in the world; it is over $1 billion on flights, hotel and air alone not withstanding the public transportation. So, you know, Siemens is in a positionto see both sides of the fence. On the one side, the technical side and the other one of course as the company itself is a user for those but we will talk about that a bit later on.Thank you.
ALISON
:Hi, there everyone. My responsibility at Trip.com is to look at what themarket needs are and then determine how we can provide products and services that meetour target customer group. Trip.com is the number one Internet site and travel agencyserving the mobile profession, or better known as the Road Warrior. We all know that theroad warrior are the true travel experts, they’re the folks who change their travelreservations multiple times, whose offices are more often on an airplane that actuallysomewhere on the ground and they are the people who are more demanding but also theyhave an increased propensity to actually transact online, which is something that we areall very interested in. But also we know that the road warrior appreciates value,convenience and control, the ability to actually control their travel destiny and because of these things and listening to what Trip.com’s target customer is really interested in, weobviously realize the opportunity to leverage our products and services through wirelessdevices.Through our relationship with Galileo International who acquired Trip.com in earlyspring of this year, we launched a very robust mobile offering that was really the first of its kind to truly put the power of the Internet and a full service travel agency in the handof the road warrior. This product and its related services are very complimentary to thefocus that Trip.com has on becoming a customer advocate, for being there every step of the way through an individual’s travel experiences. We believe that investing long termin mobile solutions is the key to the success of not only the travel industry but also other industries that are applicable to that type of customer interest and need.One of the things that we are looking at for the future is continuing to evolve this product.I think that the key is, is that it is not going to be a short-term monetary gain but really alonger term strategic playin growing customer loyalty and reducing customer servicecosts. Thank you.
RACHNA
:Hi Everybody, I guess first of all I am going to correct the pronunciationof my name; it is Rachna Korhonen. Rachna is actually an Indian name and Korhonen isa Finnish name, so I have an interesting names for people who pronounce all the time; if they can do the Indian, they can’t do the Finnish, so Rachna Korhonen. I work for acompany called Sonera Corporation. If you haven’t heard about us, you will. If you haveevery lived in Europe, you probably already have. We are the leading wireless provider inEurope, in Scandinavia, 70% penetration in Finland with mobile users. We are theleading wireless company in Finland, in Turkey and about to do the same all over Asiaand we are looking to be providing value added services here in the US. We are startingout with a couple of initiatives. One is a travel portal that I am responsible for andanother one called….just the mobile portal called Zed, which there is a whole team of 
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