The Road Not Taken

Rosenbluth is an interaction-management company, not a travel agency, so I also create partnerships with companies in order to help them collaborate without traveling. My group has been looking at how different media can affect travel expenditures. Now we're designing a sophisticated decision-support system to help companies integrate technologies such as videoconferencing into their travel programs. Creating software is the easy part. The difficulty lies in trying to change an organization's discipline and work style.

Danamichele Brennen O'Brien (dobrien@rosenbluth.com) is responsible for Rosenbluth International's global innovation, research, and product development. She holds all of Rosenbluth's patents for travel-related optimization and fare-construction systems. Rosenbluth is a private company with annual sales of more than $4 billion.

Elizabeth Churchill

Senior Research Scientist
FX Palo Alto Laboratory Inc.
Palo Alto, California

How do you establish and maintain trust in a long-distance working relationship without being constantly on the road? You let people know that you're available to them -- working alongside them, as a teammate. The easiest way to do that is to find a lightweight software application that lets you maintain a constant, real-time connection to whomever you're working with. So-called demanding technologies, such as videoconferencing, are cumbersome to set up, can create technical impediments to interactions, and end up being more of a problem than a solution.

You can create a reciprocity and a rhythm at work by using a real-time chat window. At Xerox, I've been working on designing a lightweight chat application called "Sticky Chat," which is similar to a smart Post-it note. You can open any editor, such as Microsoft Word or Adobe PhotoShop, and "stick" a chat window anywhere in a document. You then select a few people from your "buddy list" and invite them to view the document with you. You control the navigation through the document, but everyone has the same functions as the editor -- so everyone can make changes to the document and chat about it in real time.

You can pick up Sticky Chat and move it and your chat "buddies" to another part of the same document. Or you can move it to a different document or to a different editing application. You can look back at a conversation, search text by keyword, or replay a conversation segment by segment, as if you're watching a stop-action video. We've been using the prototype internally, and we're now thinking about making the program more robust -- so that it can actually be deployed.

Elizabeth Churchill (churchill@pal.xerox.com) joined FX Palo Alto in 1997. "FX Pal" is the Silicon Valley outpost of Fuji-Xerox Co., the hub for Xerox Group's operations in Asia and the Southern Pacific. Churchill's work has focused on implicit and explicit cognitive processes and their implications for designing computer interfaces and virtual environments.

Joyce Bembry

Manager, Global Business Travel
E.I. DuPont de Nemours & Co.
Wilmington, Delaware

I manage global travel for Dupont. Think about why people travel: It's a means to an end -- effective communication. Our function is not simply to book tickets and obtain low fares; it's also to facilitate interactions between people. If that's the case, then we have to start looking at other means to that end.

Right now, we're looking at other ways in which people can communicate, besides getting on a plane and traveling to another person's location. When is it appropriate to use technology, and when are face-to-face meetings the only alternative? We're also looking at what makes employees decide to travel.

If you want to look at current patterns and experiment with change, the best place to start is within a company -- with internal communications and travel. Internal relationships are easiest to change. People aren't usually inclined to try something new with valuable customers. So I've started providing organizations with alternatives -- ways to reduce travel internally. But I can't force change. People have to change the way that they understand travel, realize that they have options, and think about their travel budget in a new way.

Joyce Bembry (joyce.m.bembry@usa.dupont.com) began her career with DuPont in 1965 as a chemist. She later joined DuPont Sourcing, the company's procurement organization. Over the past 20 years, Bembry has managed several different business areas, including buying groups, distribution, import-export services, education, and development. She became manager of global business travel in 1995.