Secondly, by gaining feedback it could reduce its external research of its future clients, which ultimately reduced time and money. Large corporations that had frequent travelers were able to do all there traveling needs through one source. Without having to make phone calls to book a hotel, rental car, and get directions to their destination, the business travel could rely on AXI to fulfill its needs. Thus saving time, phone calls and more importantly access this information anytime and anywhere. Most large companies had an employee that looked after all the travel expenses. What AXI did was use technology to reduce overall costs of its consumers. By providing a system that was fully integrated with its clients, this allowed companies to keep track of business expenses, such as airfare, hotel and car rental. AXI was to lease its software to these large corporations, but most rather than leasing the software, and having a separate server or employee keep track of the system, had it hosted with AXI. Hosting these systems, in essence made AXI an application service provider. Companies that could not afford to host this service leased it through AXI, like organizations do websites, and Internet connections. Having your own server can be extremely costly. But AXI by offering the service of maintaining the system became not only the software developer but also the service provider. Furthermore, AXI provided discounts to those that choose the "new" way of doing travel, and even offered free plane tickets to those that made over certain amount of transactions. The technology used to start this system, allowed AXI to fully integrate its conventional way of doing business with the new Internet system thus making them not only a corporate travel company but also an application service provider.
The use of leading edge technology has both advantages and disadvantages. a) In what ways is the use of Internet-based travel technology desirable at AXI? b) What are some common potential risks for a company employing leading-edge technologies?.
