Travel Contract Has Firms Booking Potential Business
Travel Contract Has Firms Booking Potential Business By Nick Wakeman Staff Writer A lucrative Defense Department award holds out the promise of even bigger money for winner TRW and its teammates as government and commercial spending on travel management swells in the coming years. The potential market to provide government travel systems is $100 million annually as agencies slash costs by outsourcing support services such as
Travel Contract Has Firms Booking Potential Business By Nick Wakeman
A lucrative Defense Department award holds out the promise of even bigger money for winner TRW and its teammates as government and commercial spending on travel management swells in the coming years. The potential market to provide government travel systems is $100 million annually as agencies slash costs by outsourcing support services such as travel management, industry sources said.
"This is one of the first contracts really aimed at improving the business practices of the Defense Department," said Mitchell Ross, vice president of enterprise management for TRW's systems integration group. The Defense Travel System will be owned and operated by TRW, and the government will pay for it like a service on a per transaction basis, Ross said. Both are new concepts for the government, he said."Historically, the government would have had a developer-contractor, then the government would own and operate the system. It might be good, but it would not keep up with technology." Because the system will be built using commercially available products, TRW will continually upgrade the system as new technologies become available, Ross said. Navarra said: "If DoD can implement this, I think other agencies might follow. Everyone wants to get away from paper." The Defense Travel System itself might become available for civilian agencies to use, but there are no concrete plans for that now, Ross said. One thing, however, is clear: The defense travel project is creating an opportunity to expand the TRW team's presence in the government market. Gelco gets about 15 percent of its revenue from the government, and DTS should boost that to about 25 percent, Shively said. He would not say what the company's overall revenues are. The DTS win will "provide us with the opportunity to be an important player in the rest of the federal government," Shively said. |
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