KDS - KDS Newsletter

Event | KDS Lunchtime Seminar: Track and Control Maverick Spend

Ewan — Thu, 17 May 2012 11:33:18 +0000

Wed, 06/20/2012 - 12:00

Europe/London

The next in the KDS Lunchtime Seminar Series addresses the challenge faced by travel and procurement departments in successfully tracking and controlling spend outside the defined procurement channels and systems.

The Managed v's Unmanaged Travel debate has been ongoing for some time and it rermains a hot topic in the market today. Whatever your view one thing remains true, maverick travel spend must be controlled and tracked to enable the organisation to undertake accurate and informed spend analysis and opportunity assessments, alongside meeting Duty of Care and Corporate Manslaughter requirements.

In a recent survey 59% of CPO’s stated that increasing visibility and control of maverick spend was a top priority for 2012, an objective echoed by Travel Managers. The ability to undertake spend analysis and opportunity assessments with accuracy and clarity poses a significant challenge without control and visibility of your maverick spend. Travel spend outside of the preferred procurement process or system will have a large impact on your ability to increase spend economies of scale, increase process and procurement efficiencies and to have the information necessary for informed contract negotiation. We will discuss how to track and control maverick spend to successfully face these challenges.

When: June 20th, 2012
Where: The Waldorf Hilton, London
Duration: 1 Hour
Time: 1pm
Cost: None

Learn How Controlling Maverick Spend Allows You To:

Cut the costs associated with maverick spend
Successfully track and manage data for informed negotiations on supplier rates and commitments
Facilitate duty of care, health and safety & corporate manslaughter compliance
Accurately track maverick spend to support your market share commitments

What's Included?

This complementary event includes expert presentations a sandwich buffet lunch, tea, coffee and refreshments alongside excellent networking opportunities.

To apply for your place please complete the form below.

First Name:*
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Wed, 06/20/2012 - 13:00 - Europe/London

Press release | Mundi Global Alliance: the First Ever Travel and Expense Applications for the Global Market

Ewan — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 16:30:35 +0000

Thursday, April 26, 2012

Mundi Global Alliance: KDS announce the the First Ever Travel and Expense Applications for the Global Market.

Paris - London, April 26th 2012 – Leading International travel and expense (T&E) management solution provider KDS announces the launch of the Mundi Global Alliance, a first of its kind alliance between KDS (Europe), nuTravel (North America) and Serko (APAC) aimed at providing global corporations with the best products, services, content and user experience whilst ensuring local expertise and best in breed technology.

The Mundi Global Alliance is the coming together of three best in class online booking tools from around the globe and will enable customers to select one tool globally with true, focused in region support and service. All too often global organisations sacrifice local and regional requirements in the pursuit of a “one size fits all” solution. The Mundi Alliance means the increasingly common challenge of global convenience with local content and support will finally be surpassed.

KDS has a large and growing multinational customer base and the company will continue to provide them with direct support and services. The Alliance brings KDS the enhanced ability to leverage the content and technology already being utilised by the other alliance members for added customer services.

“KDS has always had global customers, and in fact last year our global customer footprint grew faster than the rest of our business,” says KDS CEO Dean Forbes. “By participating in the Mundi Alliance, we will be able to deliver an even better service, even more content and even better support across the globe by working with our alliance partners. Serko and nuTravel are market leaders in their regions and so working with them closely will benefit our customers greatly.”

With operations based throughout North America, Europe and the APAC Region, each OBT product is localised for its respective markets; aiding in the delivery of industry-leading content and a premiere-level user experience while dramatically increasing the speed of deployment, training, adoption, and “touchless” transactions.

“The time has finally arrived to fill a major void with the Mundi Global Alliance. We have discussed this with top industry executives and global procurement managers and it has been received far beyond our initial expectations”, says Carmine Carpanzano, President and CEO of nuTravel. This sentiment is reinforced by Serko CEO Darren Graftin, ”Rather than a single focus from a global company, you have three regionally focussed technologies coming together to form a single global alliance.”

Mundi’s collective mission is to deliver to its members’ customer base a robust, intuitive and scalable selection of tools that are built for a global economy yet tailored down to the local level. While technology is at the forefront of any successful global travel program, local expertise is essential to best serve clients and their individualised, cultural nuances around the world.

Blog Story | KDS v12.2: New travel content and better reporting

Dan Fitzgerald — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 16:19:37 +0000

Every 9 weeks, more or less, we add new features to KDS.

This release, v12.2 (second release of 2012, get it) brings some important new content. Here are some details.

Hotel Content Choice - 2 New Links

As we have mentioned in a recent KDS TV clip, diversity of hotel content is something we value at KDS. As the highly competitive hotel CRS marketplace has expanded, we have built numerous links to hotel reservation systems. Already in KDS today, as an alternative to the GDS products, you can connect to HRS, Hotel.de, CDS, Amex Hotel Hub, Harp, Hotelzon, Premier Inn and Amex Hotel Hub.

With this version we add another two corporate hotel products, to this portfolio.

HCorpo is another strong AirPlus partner and offers their centralised payment solutions as well as a wide selection of European hotel content.

iAlbatros is the "new kid on the block". Bringing a tight focus on the French market as well as a range of value added products to complement their content.

Both of these new links are fully integrated into KDS. The content appears in the same way as it does coming from the GDS and full itineraries are possible, mixing GDS and non-GDS content.

National Car Rental
As with hotels, so also with car rental. Many KDS customers are committed to use just one car provider. In this situation, there is no need to hit the GDS for a "shopping" comparison. It is much better just to connect directly to the supplier. For this reason KDS has already built connections to: Avis, Europcar, Hertz and Sixt. With the new version of KDS, we have teamed up with National to build a direct (XML) link to their system.

This will allow National customers to get availability and rates and in the fastest possible way. Other existing products such as National's E-voucher (bill-back) solution are also available, which may not have been available via GDS.

The content is fully integrated, the user never leaves KDS and passive segments can be generated so the TMC has the full trip record.

Flex Reporting: Customised Fields
KDS offers its customers control over their Travel and Expense activities. Reporting is essential to this. Without great reporting and an ability to investigate why certain patterns of behaviour are emerging, travel managers and procurement officers are "flying blind".

KDS has 3, reporting products, Executive Suite, Travel Manager Suite and Flex Reporting. The first two offer dashboard style KPI tracking, while Flex brings a deeper more analytic approach. In the new version of KDS the Flex product has been extended to cover reporting on Custom Fields.
Custom Fields are extensively used by customers to add information according to their specific corporate needs .For example, different fields can be configured and made mandatory for each expense type.

thetrainline Special Services

Rail, particularly high speed rail is the fastest growing type of business travel. There is a growing pattern that wherever a high speed train link competes with an airline route, up to about 3 ½ hours, the train link will win. The classic example is that London-Paris was the highest use continental air route. Now Eurostar has 80% of that market.

Business travel by train is a KDS speciality and some of the most requested features are about seating options. Now in KDS our UK travellers can request some additional "menu options" for configuring their seat preferences on TrainLine bookings.

New direct connect airlines
The market for non-GDS LCCs continues to expand. Not all are heavily used for corporate travel, but KDS is constantly reviewing which ones to add and manage to the selection that we integrate and bring to our customers. New in this version will be:

Based in Johannesburg operating domestic South African services.

Also South African but also operating to Kenya as well as domestic routes.

Canada's Low Cost Carrier. Operating domestically and to many international destinations.

South African LCC operating both domestically and to neighbouring countrie

Follow Dan on Twitter @DanAtKDS

Event | KDS Webinar: Unified Travel and Expense Management

Ewan — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 11:42:58 +0000

Tue, 05/15/2012 - 09:00

Europe/London

Register for this KDS webinar to learn why a unified travel and expense management process is key in increasing control, accuracy, compliance and cost reduction associated with your T&E programme.

In this short webinar we will be looking at how a unified travel and expense management process will provide numerous benefits to you and your organisation.

Webinar Details:

Date: 15th May 2012
Time: 10am (UK)
Duration: 45 minutes

We will discuss:

The benefits of unified T&E management
How to increase the control and accuracy of your T&E programme
Aligning T&E with yopur corporate objectives
Mobile T&E management
Reducing T&E costs

To regsiter for this complementary webinar please click here.

Tue, 05/15/2012 - 10:00 - Europe/London

Event | KDS Sponsor the Sidecore Mini Fair 2012

Ewan — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 09:40:33 +0000

Mon, 04/23/2012 - 11:00

Europe/Paris

This is a real 'must attend' event for all Nordic travel and expense professionals. We are extremely pleased to be sponsoring this years event which is taking place at the Elite Park Avenue Hotel, Gothenburg on April 23rd.

Simplified Travel Management - Gothenburg April 23rd 2012

KDS are pleased to be sponsoring Sidecore's popular travel fair, which this year will be held in Gothenburg. This years fair focuses on the simplification of the travel management process.

Benefits of attendance:

Learn how companies have successfully simplified their travel management processes
Learn how to remove unnecessary travel management processes
Gain an overview of of the intelligent solutions available to you and connect with valuable contacts and leading vendors
Gain insight into the trends, processes and best practices in travel management.
Gain inspiration from other successful expense management projects

Program - Monday 23 April Program

12:00 to 13:00 - Exhibition and snacks
13:00 to 13:30 - Seminar In Three easy ways to reduce travel management
13:30 to 14:00 - Seminar II Logica journey from the "clue" to a controlled travel process
14:00 to 15:30 - Utställar workshop, coffee and cake
15:30 to 16:00 - Panel Discussion

We hope to meet with you at the KDS stand onsite but if you would like to arrange a meeting please do not hesitate to contact Glenn Billqvist on +46 (0)707-95 74 81 or email on gbillqvist@kds.com

Mon, 04/23/2012 - 13:00 - Europe/Paris