Telcoms are starting to properly understand the opportunities ahead when they marry technology with the needs of consumers and the travel industry.
Alcatel-Lucent, for example, is creating a new platform to help enterprises and developers make sense of the ongoing fragmentation of the mobile ecosystem.
The idea is that an organisation can use the technology to allow mobile apps to easily access remote APIs from a number of disparate sources.
A-LU recently acquired companies like ProgrammableWeb (a well known directory of APIs) and OpenPlug (a write-once, deploy everywhere SDK), and partnered with the DeviceAnywhere mobile testing tool.
In a travel scenario, the platform is used by an airline application to access and mesh up trip data, the air miles platform, the airline’s CRM, restaurant coupons, social data and the mobile carrier’s APIs.
One sample scenario shows how an airline can request the user to send immediate satisfaction feedback upon landing (when detected at destination by the operator location API), incentivize the submission with a gift in miles, and submit the data to the CRM system – in this case, A-LU’s owned Genesys.
The CRM system then runs rules based on the traveler profile and can take actions such as sending ground staff to help the traveller or creating a very specific map of where customer satisfaction is being hit.
Another scenario shows a contextual map where users can see who of their connections is in the area, and any available restaurant coupons.
Meanwhile, not forgetting the current enthusiasm for everything Groupon and local deals, coupons in the form of QR codes can be redeemed at the restaurant thanks to scanning technology provided by Codilink.
Looks like mobile, travel technology and second-guessing the requirements of the modern consumer are coming together in some innovative and useful ways.
Here is a clip:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIF8FHb6874