TravelPerk has announced it will open up its services to partners, customers, developers and other players in
the?travel?sector through an API. Initially, the services will cover HR
and expense management use cases, but the company says more services will be
added.
The move means that TravelPerk¡¯s?customers
will be able to integrate?its tools directly into their internal corporate
systems, such as existing HR or finance applications.
The organisation says the?travel?industry
has traditionally approached the software-as-a-service ecosystem (of which
Travelperk is part) in a closed way, ¡°with providers trying to pick winners
from the stable of software developers in areas such as expense management or HR.
This restricts choice and forces customers to compromise on the tools that
might not be the best fit for their business.¡±
The company expects its partners, including BambooHR, PayHawk and MobileXpense, to build new integrations
and list these apps on the?TravelPerk?marketplace, opening up new acquisition channels to market their products to
existing and future customers.
TravelPerk¡¯s chief product officer Ross
McNairn told BTN Europe, ¡°We have designed it like Lego so that if someone wants to
build an X-wing they can; we will allow companies to innovate,¡± he said.
He hinted that challenger banks would be among its potential
partners. ¡°I can¡¯t say precisely who at the moment but the partners we are
working with are some of the most innovative banking companies in the world.¡±
For corporates who develop their own travel tools in-house, it
will mean they can embed processes, such as onboarding new users,
expense management and financial reporting, directly into their internal systems.
McNairn said: ¡°When we start to open up the expense APIs,
who knows what sort of real time reporting they want to give their teams or how
their management team might want to analyse travel spend.¡±
He added the company would soon open up ¡°a huge amount of
additional functionality¡± but would not be drawn on when its core travel
booking platform would be available through an open API.?
McNairn said, ¡°This move has not been inspired by Covid but by
watching what others are doing in this space. Others are taking a closed garden
approach.¡±