As customer expectations rise, a platform approach rises to the occasion

I travel quite a bit these days. In my 18 months leading the US Enterprise Commercial team, I’ve visited almost every field office in the United States. And I’ve noticed something changing recently – my fellow travelers simply demand more. 

That’s not to say we’re a demanding bunch, but it’s interesting to see that just as in so many other industries, the baseline for customer expectations has risen.

In the midst of the busiest travel season of the year as thousands of us take to the skies to visit family, friends, and loved ones for the holidays, I was reflecting on an opportunity I had this year to connect with Travelport, the travel commerce platform  powering the customer experience for so many big names in the travel industry – easyJet, United Airlines, Concur, and more. 

As a traveler, Travelport isn’t the first name that comes to mind when I book a trip – but maybe it should be. Travelport, and companies like them in many different industries, prove that the true value to consumers isn’t just what the end user can see. 

In many ways, the underlying platform is the unsung hero of a customer’s digital experience. What I find interesting about Travelport is the company’s approach to that platform.

This is a theme covered by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella in his book Hit Refresh. As a platform company ourselves, Microsoft is all about building customer value into our cloud platforms, whether that comes from our own first-party solutions, partnerships with Adobe or Linux, or customer relationships that advance the realm of what’s possible, like the work we've done with Boeing or Paccar.

Like companies including EcoLabs or Halliburton, Travelport can use its specific travel technology industry expertise, augmented by the capabilities delivered by partners like Microsoft, to reason over billions of points of data, creating efficiencies and using reliable logic to create personalized experiences for travelers like me that make buying travel better, no matter what interface or app we’re using.

The platform approach to partnership makes this possible. It allows companies with deep industry expertise to focus their efforts and R&D spend on what they are best at, bringing in partners to complement their IP and extend their capabilities even further. For example, Microsoft and Halliburton can collaborate to apply machine learning technologies to reservoir characterization, modeling, and simulation.

These partnerships also build a strong foundation for ongoing transformation and rapid innovation. There’s a saying that if you want to go fast, go alone, but if you want to go far, go together. I believe we can go further and faster if we go together, and that’s why I’m so excited by the stories of collaborative transformation I hear from our customers and partners every day.

So next time you're drinking clean water right from the tap, filling your car up at the pump, or checking your phone to confirm a seat assignment, spare a thought for the platforms and partnerships that make it all happen.