American Express Launches e-Auction Tool
Published January 19th, 2006
American Express Business Travel this week took the wraps off an online solution for negotiating corporate meeting venues, promising to help enterprises bring meetings procurement into greater alignment with corporate purchasing best practices.The new American Express electronic auction (e-auction) solution brings corporations and hoteliers together in an Internet arena, providing greater visibility into the venue bid negotiation process. The e-auction solution complements the services offered by Corporate Meeting Solutions, a meetings procurement practice at American Express.
The e-auction tool is intended to help meeting buyers and procurement professionals identify and source strategic hotel partners for their meetings needs and field competitive package offers consistent with their corporate travel policies and preferred supplier strategies.
“When used in conjunction with American Express’ strategic sourcing practices the new e-auction solution brings greater rigor to meetings procurement, helping corporate buyers gain greater control over and derive more value from their meetings spend,” American Express said in a statement announcing the new offering.
Additionally, the e-auction technology can help buyers reduce cycle time and achieve improved sourcing and decision-making efficiency gains, and it can help hoteliers focus on providing the best, most competitive meetings packages possible, according to American Express.
The e-auction tool will be available in January for American Express’ U.S.-based clients, with a global release to follow later in the year. The Web-based application was developed for American Express Business Travel by StarCite, a provider of on-demand global meeting solutions.
