KDS's Competitive Migration Offer Helps North American Corporations Improve Adoption Rates and Cut Costs while Upgrading to KDS Corporate
New-York, USAJuly 31, 2003KDS, a provider of online business travel management solutions, with a first-of-its-kind Competitive Migration Offer targeting North American corporations. Companies upgrading from their current Self-Booking Tool (SBT) to KDS Corporate, KDS's online business travel management solution, will benefit from six months of free usage. In addition, during this period, KDS will fully cover license, usage and support fees and offer implementation services at little cost to migrating corporations. After challenging KDS Solutions' capabilities for six months, corporations can choose to keep KDS Corporate and enjoy its powerful features or to return to their former SBT.
A benchmark study released by KDS last month shows that KDS's fare engine displays the lowest fares on the market. Compared to seven other online travel sites, KDS produced the lowest fares 74% of the time. On 19 different itineraries, KDS provided fares 23% less expensive than its competitors. (*)
Current economic conditions have pushed corporations to implement drastic cost reduction programs. Many companies have turned to self-booking solutions to automate and better control one of the most important indirect expenses.
"More corporations are now ready for KDS," says Michael Steiner, Senior Vice President, KDS US. "We see many enterprises moving on to the next step; they want more from their online booking solution. They want to handle advanced travel policy requirements and deploy their online booking solution abroad and/or across complex business units: KDS provides a real advantage to these companies. We want corporations to freely decide which is the best solution to meet their specific needs."
KDS's Competitive Migration Offer is an opportunity for large companies to test KDS's new generation solution without any financial risk. Specifically, during six months, they will be able to challenge KDS Corporate to manage their growing needs for integration, flexible administration, international deployment, complex policy management and direct access to suppliers.
This offer, tested on a representative panel of travel managers, drew tremendous interest. "Our customers are telling us that, after extensive benchmarking, KDS is the only solution in the market able to properly handle global requirements and deployments. We are convinced that, after test-driving our solution for a few months, large corporations will realize that KDS can exceed the most sophisticated of global online self-booking needs. The huge advantage of our proposal is that, for the first time, it gives buyers the freedom to choose with all the cards in their hands, and without any financial investment," adds Steiner.
Recently, KDS has deployed its travel management solution at various large North American corporations.
With over 20,000 business travelers located in 120 countries, the Interpublic Group of Companies is a world leading organization for media and business services. After a board study, benchmarking 20 online business travel management solutions, IPG selected KDS Corporate globally. "Today, we believe that KDS offers a truly global solution, the only one answering our requirements," explains Kathleen Kaden, Vice President Corporate Travel, IPG.
Among other U.S.-based corporations using KDS, Autodesk, Inc., the world's leading design software and digital content company has recently changed online booking tool for KDS Corporate. "We are convinced that KDS will help us better control and manage our corporate travel processes," says Joan Rizzi, Autodesk's Worldwide Travel Manager. "Our decision to change to KDS was based on their ability to provide a wider set of functionalities than other online booking systems. Our adoption rate is over 60% in the US, and with KDS's help we will increase the number of online transactions booked here and abroad."
