Travelport has named Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) as its primary technology partner. TCS is a part of the Tata Group and a leading global IT services, consulting and business solutions organization with over 378,000 highly trained IT consultants in 45 countries.
The appointment of TCS follows an extensive selection process during which several of the world’s premier IT development companies were assessed on their ability to deliver unrivalled IT services. TCS was selected in recognition of its extensive domain strengths in the global travel industry and its ability to work alongside Travelport with transformative intent and provide scale in application engineering and assurance services.
TCS will partner with Travelport to innovate and shape a superior customer experience through the power of digital technologies. Travelport will also leverage TCS’ extensive mathematical and digital expertise to accelerate the benefits of data and analytics in its business.
Through this appointment Travelport has significantly rationalised the number of third party IT development companies it works with, resulting in both a concentration of spend and increased domain knowledge expertise as well as creating additional funding for strategic research and development projects (R&D). At the same time, Travelport is also consolidating its wholly owned US operations into two centres of excellence in Atlanta and Denver.
Commenting on the appointment, Gordon Wilson, Travelport’s President and CEO, said: “The purpose of our heightened investment in technology is all about bringing new, innovative products and solutions to market even faster to meet the needs of our customers around the world. This forms an integral part of our overall growth plan and long term strategy as we continue to redefine travel commerce and differentiate ourselves in the areas of airline merchandising, hotel distribution, mobile and B2B payments.”
Wilson continued: “We already have a deep relationship with TCS based on our positive track record of working together in the past. This, together with the unsurpassed level of senior engagement TCS has always shown us, means that they now have a very clear understanding of our long term strategic goals and how best to work with us in order to take full advantage of the significant opportunities that lie ahead for our business. In particular, they will be a great partner to our global technology organisation as we drive positive change in how we handle in-house development in our US technology hubs and service the needs of our customers even faster. Working closely together on data and analytics is another good example of the sort of extended engagement we intend to have with them going forward.”
“We are delighted to expand our partnership to help further transform and reimagine the Travelport enterprise for the digital era,” added Mr. N Chandrasekaran, Managing Director and CEO of TCS. “By deploying TCS’ strong capabilities in the travel industry, combined with its significant strengths in leading-edge digital technologies such as data driven analytics, we will help Travelport deliver superior customer experience and new digital products to its customers in reaching its full potential as a Travel Commerce Platform.”
