Another one rides the Airbus

European aircraft builder Airbus has announced the implementation of an SAP web services-based travel management application as a first step in a planned group-wide migration to a service-oriented architecture. Airbus will install the travel management component of mySAP ERP 2004 software, which uses service-oriented architecture technology.

The new system replaces a homegrown system at the company’s plant in France, an actual Lotus-based system (How many of these are left in the world today?) in its Spanish operations, and earlier SAP versions at facilities in Germany and the UK, James Westgarth, manager of travel technology procurement at Airbus, said last week in an interview at the European Sapphire customer event in Paris. Airbus travel technology procurement manager James Westgarth said last week that his company “like[d] the idea of being able to manage everything internally and to cherry-pick for the best solution in every class.”

Westgarth also hinted that additional components, such as online booking, could also come from SAP. A serious reduction in administration costs and business processing (particularly the paper-based reimbursement process) was necessary for the firm, thus the decision to deploy a new web services-based travel management system. Airbus has a travel budget of €250 million (approximately US $320 million), which is used to help pay for more than 180,000 trips annually. Airbus has a strategy to migrate to mySAP ERP 2004 across multiple systems and countries over a number of years, promised Westgarth, “but it’s not clear when and to what extent.”

Westgarth did mention that some “issues” had cropped up in the rollout of the travel management application, but he excused difficulties away with “Because we’re the first big company to implement this technology, we’ve had difficulty finding enough skilled people on the market, and some work was required to integrate the web interface into our portal.” Airbus has outsourced its valued-added tax reclaim activities to a third-party specialized in this service.