American Express Interactive (AXI)

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American Express Interactive (AXI)

• Old dog, new tricks
• Elena Todorova Jin Park

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AXI Part I (Elena Todorova)

• Background
• Major Events
• Motivation for going online
• Strategies for implementation

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Background

• American Express (AmEx) founded in 1850
• It is a world leader in charge and credit cards,
  Travelers Cheques, travel, financial planning,
  business services, insurance and international
  banking.

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Major Events

• 11/1997 AXI Travel AmExs first Internet
  business
• 1998 AXI Expense
• 1999 AXI Purchasing Solutions
• 1999 American Express _at_ Work
• 1999 B2B Commerce Network e-procurement portal

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Motivation for going online

• First Mover
• Define industry B2B standards
• Maintain Profitability

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Strategies for implementation

• Partnerships
• Early involvement of key customers
• CSI created independent unit in new location

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AXI Part II (Jin Park)

• Barriers, challenges for online strategies
• Organization factors
• Technology solutions
• Critical success factors

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Barriers, challenges for online strategies

• They didnt want to cannibalize existing business
  streams of revenue
• The barriers of getting into the market for AXI
  were incredibly low because they could rely on
  enormous cash reserves, huge interest from the
  executive committee, years of business knowledge
  and technical savvy from Microsoft.

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Barriers, challenges for online strategies

• After the tool was launched, some questions began
  to surface
• How is the behavior of the user changed? How can
  we ltalmostgt force the user to use the site
  instead of going through the travel agent?
• CSI answered with points and a training effort
  to teach administrative assistants how to use
  the tool

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Organization factors

• AXI Travel team moved to off-site location in New
  York to keep from disrupting the main company
• A portion of the team went out to Redmond, WA to
  work with the Microsoft developers

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Technology solutions

• AXI Travel software had originally been
  envisioned to be located in other systems,
  however, it was easy enough to use from any
  location.
• Microsoft created their Travel engine
• GetThere, Inc. created the CTO software
• Concur Technologies, Inc. developed Xpense
  Management System

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Technology solutions

• TRADEX Technologies and ec-Content, Inc. and
  Ventro all teamed up to create MarketMile
• The promise of MarketMile was to target the
  buying needs of midsized companies, offering
  everything from office and industrial supplies to
  computers and temporary labor. (Kalakota, 126)

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Critical success factors

• There were no major benchmarks mentioned within
  any of the articles
• AXI had a lot of money, research, and development
  was thrown into every project
• Were they all bound to succeed?

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AXI Interactive today