Lierin: (00:04)
Good afternoon and good morning everybody. welcome to our webinar with Booking Builder Technologies and Cornerstone Information Systems. Talking here about all new productivity tools, saving you time and improving service. So, I see we’ve got a bunch of people in already. We’re gonna give it another minute or so to let everybody get settled. I see that the attendee rate is still climbing. Mat and Seth, I will let you know when we are ready to go.

So, in the meantime, for those of you who are here all already, we have being joined here today by Mat Orrego, C E O of Cornerstone Information Systems, and Seth Perlman, CEO of Booking Builder Technologies. I’m Lierin Falzoni and I’m Cornerstone’s Marketing Manager, and I will be moderating today. Let’s see. Looks like we’ve got a good number of people, actually, who are in early, so I’m excited about that. Looks like everybody else is kind of excited about that. So we’re gonna give it maybe, maybe one or two more minutes here while we wait for everybody to get in.

Mat: (01:12)
Good deal.

Lierin: (01:14)
And before I get any questions about it, yes, this webinar is being recorded, and yes, everybody,  whether you attended today or not, will be getting recordings of the webinar. So it will be available for you after today. Actually, it looks like our attendees are leveling out, so I’m gonna say, wow, two after the hour. That’s,  that’s pretty good for a webinar for people having Max people come in. So, okay, everybody, what we’re gonna do, we’re gonna get started here. We’ve got a lot to cover. first things first, we wanted to talk a little bit about the key takeaways that we are going to have throughout this discussion. what we want you to come away with being,  these four things you can see on screen, but I’m gonna go over them with you anyway. And then at the end, we’ll have Mat and Seth,  go back over these key takeaways and discuss kind of the conclusions to the discussion and how we can implement all of these things.

Lierin: (02:17)
So we would like you to come away with the best ways to tap Booking Builder Technologies and Cornerstone Information Systems synergies. we’re going to give you insights into streaming processes and improving your services. we’re going to give you ideas on easy adoptions for your business to get started. And then at the very end, the piece de resistance, we’re going to have a way for you to get involved and shape the next solution that Booking Builder Technologies and Cornerstone Information Systems are pursuing. So that’ll be exciting, and we will also be excited to hear your inputs.so throughout this webinar also, I would like to point out that you have a chat box. go ahead and chat anything to me. I’m going to be able to, to see that. And then I’ll ask,  Mat and Seth to answer. We will have a dedicated question and answer session at the very end. but don’t hesitate to put anything in that box. I’ll be able to make sure that they can get that addressed,  during the presentation.

Lierin: (03:19)
So, as I said, we’ve got Mat Orrego, c e o of Cornerstone Information Systems, and Seth Perlman here,  booking Builders Technology, c e o.I know that you guys have been working together for,  a good while here. you both the companies and yourselves professionally have been you’ve known each other for a while, been working for each with each other for a while.I’ll bring up here on screen a little bit about each of,  your companies, but I’ll let you guys talk, talk to your companies. What, what do you do,  individually, and tell us a little bit about your partnership.

Mat: (03:54)
well, let me, let me start off with that because I Seth and I have known each other since we were kids. literally you know. And,  it’s, it’s been a while. So, I, I got started in the industry a little bit later than Seth because his dad was in family, were in the in the travel industry. But Seth started his own company as I did. he started automated Travel systems. I started Cornerstone Information Systems, and we were kind of competitors in the,  in the, in the early, early nineties. and got to know each other along the way. And as everyone knows in the travel industry competition is something that typically leads to, to partnerships. it’s, it’s a close industry remains that way,  over the years. And,  you know, and Seth about and I have enjoyed each other’s,  company and in social settings and competitive settings,  but I’m gonna let Seth tell you know, what what happened,  you know, at the end of the nineties and,  and how we started collaborating there.

Seth: (05:00)
Well, I I never really thought of it as we’ve known each other since we were kids, but,  there’s no doubt that’s the case.so come 1999, 2000,  my original company, automated Travel Systems ended up getting sold, and the folks who acquired it were only interested in certain parts of it, and they spun off the rest, the quality control and res facts and res mail and other goodies,  all got scooped up by Mat and let’s call it friendly competition before that turned into friendly collaboration. And,  I spent a couple years really helping out Cornerstone directly with integrating our old products and so on. and then from there, I ended up branching off with forming Booking Builder and our groundbreaking relationship that we formed with Southwest Airlines back in the day. and through all of that Mat and I talk regularly and, and we’re, we’ve always been looking for synergies and how do we work together. And,  I think, Mat, I’ll hand this back to you for a moment just to give a little more information on Cornerstone and then we can jp into what those synergies look like.

Mat: (06:28)
So,  quite quite an evolution over those years and, and through the industry as well too. I mean, so many things have changed and we’re I don’t think we ever stopped changing in this industry. I mean, and so from a cornerstone perspective, I mean,  you know, we, we started in what is known as mid office. but later we moved into things that were around data, but, but essentially, I mean our our focus is around automation and helping companies and travel companies and operations of travel companies as well as a a couple of handful of,  a buyers as well of travel streamline their operations and, and increase their efficiencies, whether it’s to reduce manual labor or, or what have you.

Mat: (07:17)
But really finding ways to, to make the travel transaction more efficient and, and more productive. and, and that’s been our, our goal. I mean,  for forever. You know, our mission is to make efficiencies and bring efficiencies to bear around travel. And so, but, but we’ve gotten involved in in the esoteric and the things that typically fall out of automation and are very complex, sometimes everything from schedule changes to not as much to ticketing. Everything in travel tends to go pretty well the original time. it’s when it changes and requires a a reissue or to bring in a residual value into a transaction and apply it well,  you know, that, that the troubles start in this industry and things become more difficult. And so we’ve really been focused not just on the quality of reservations, but the,  efficiency and productivity of them, whether it’s for the, the T M C,  or for the traveler themselves, so that they can become more productive in, in their trips. So a a lot of what we do is,  is, is acquire data at scale and proc and, and automate at at scale as well. And,  and bring good information and good workflow to bear. And I think that’s where today’s discussion is gonna lead us which is how do we combine good data and good process with good,  you know, user experience and good interfacing of that data with booking builders. And with that, I hand it back to you.

Seth: (08:52)
Thank you, Mat.so at Booking Builder, our focus has been on the han travel agent, where Cornerstone is more focused on the backend. We’re focused on that person sitting there, picking up the phone, answering emails and handling and processing reservations. And as technology has progressed over the years, the pressure on that han has gotten more and more. And at Booking Builder, our goal is to relieve that pressure to automate things that have to be done by that person, but they don’t really like doing them, or aren’t the best focus of their attention,  as well as to really maximize all of their productivity. So we’re best known for our Booking Builder desktop product, which starting with Southwest Airlines, but with hundreds of others as well, brings in non GDS content and makes it really, really easy for the agent to compare non g d s fairs with those in the gds, as well as make those bookings.

Seth: (10:12)
Now, I say we’re best known for that, that is by far not everything that we do.by being focused around the point of sale around what that agent does, excuse me, what that agent does, we’re constantly in touch with our customers and identifying areas of need. So one of the questions, of course is, do you ever make enough money? Do you ever fully maximize your ability to sell preferred suppliers? And of course, that’s always a no. And with our Booking Builder Boost product, for example, we walk the agent through at relevant times exactly who to book. So when an agent looks at flights, we analyze who the booking is for, what your deals are, and we make a recommendation. And through that, we’re able to dramatically increase preferred suppliers.other things that we’re doing here that we’ll show you today is we show agents unused tickets. We bring in relevant information at the exact moment that information is needed. So rather than overwhelming agents with trying to remember everything, we show them what they need to know, when they need to know it.we also have a variety of other types of automation and quality control functions that happen right as the agent is working on their reservations through q and a. We can certainly get into a lot more detail. I don’t wanna get into it too far right now, so, Erin, no worries. Let’s proceed.

Lierin: (11:58)
So, what’s new? And at this point, I’m actually going to stop sharing the PowerPoint,  because we don’t need our audience to death by PowerPoint. We’re just gonna have a discussion here today.so obviously there’s a lot of shared goals and objectives for both of you.tell us about these goals and how you plan to accomplish them together.

Mat: (12:20)
Seth, why don’t you take that?

Seth: (12:23)
Sounds good. So, one of the things that our customers have spoken to us in detail about over the years is lack of comprehensive data at the travel agent point of sale. Cornerstone collects incredible amounts of data, live booking data, post ticket data, and so on. But, and it makes for wonderful reports, right? Wonderful information to use to base decisions on, on the big picture. But what about that in the moment, those day-to-day decisions? And so what we have been working toward is a collaboration where we can take this data that Cornerstone has been warehousing and collecting, and bring it right up in front of the agent, right when it’s needed to help that agent, answer questions, make decisions, and so on.unused tickets is a very big example of that,  where Cornerstone is collecting and managing the unused ticket data. And whenever an agent pulls up a booking, our product Booking Builder Genie can connects up with Cornerstone and shows the agent not only the relevant unused tickets for that traveler, but also for the company in general.our, the thing that we’re most excited about right now has to do with trip history and bringing a whole new level of CRM capabilities of customer relationship management capabilities, right, to the travel agent. Mat, do you wanna talk about that for a moment?

Mat: (14:14)
, absolutely. I mean, and, and in general, I think just riffing off a little bit of what Seth said, I mean that as Cornerstone goes through a lot of its workflows and processes through automation, we collect a massive amount of data,  often, often it stays in place. I mean, it, it doesn’t, it doesn’t move to the necessary places that it needs to. Yes, there is that traditional reporting, that dashboard that it eventually hits, but it, but it tends to be,  much after the fact, and it doesn’t tend to be accessible at, at its needs. So we’re really focused down is how do we keep data in motion so that it is, it reaches people’s,  you know, decision processes or needs to get information at, at the right time. So this is an area of focus for us in general, which is to, to to have very event driven kind of data practices and data,  you know, functionality within our platforms.

Mat: (15:14)
And it’s an area of focus that allows us to interface to,  booking Builder,  but to a variety of other sources as well. I mean, often is the case that,  sometimes data doesn’t need a han interaction. It needs just to get to the right place at the right time.but in a customer services environment that we live in and travel,  cuz travel is a services environment, whether it’s self-service or through the help of agents, which is where Booking Builder focuses, they need information right there so that they can,  interact with it and be informed as to what’s been going on,  historically and potentially in the future. Because we have a lot of data that is about what’s happening in the future, not necessarily about the current, but in the, in the in the, in the past in the future as well as in the past. So I think it’s really exciting what we can do to bring that information to bear now with the technologies that are available.

Lierin: (16:15)
So can you give our audience any specifics, any particular examples to showcase regarding these key integration ideas?

Seth: (16:23)
So Leon, I think that,  it would be a great time to show the video of the trip history.

Lierin: (16:31)
. So I think that would speak to the Absolutely. I forgot to mention to everybody, we do have a couple of videos queued up here for you, so I’m going to direct your attention.and we have this, I will start it right now. Can you guys see it? Perfect.

Seth: (19:14)
Thank you.

Speaker 5: (19:20)
What,

Seth: (19:21)
What’s so exciting for us about this is that

Lierin: (19:30)
Oh, no,

Seth: (19:36)
What, what’s so exciting for us about this is that

Speaker 5: (19:40)
Okay,

Seth: (19:42)
As Mat was saying we’re taking this data previously been locked in, right?

Speaker 5: (19:47)
I don’t think so. I can mute this

Lierin: (19:51)
Watching. I’m so sorry. Let me go ahead and see if I can mute everybody.

Seth: (19:54)
.

Lierin: (19:59)
All right. We should be good. Oh, I accidentally muted them too. Okay, nevermind. Click to unmute both of you guys. There you go. You’re good now, .

Seth: (20:12)
Alright, thank you.

Seth: (20:15)
,  we haven’t figured out how to automate webinars yet, but,  so what’s so exciting for us about this is that there’s this wealth of information that Cornerstone has been holding, and we can make it immediately available to the travel agent.I ideally using caller id, as you saw in the video, we can show trip history and all kinds of details before you’ve even picked up the phone.but it’s by no means needs the caller id. The idea really is that whenever there’s a phone call, whenever someone, an agent is working on a reservation, we’re able to pull in all of this detailed trip history, we’re able to see, right? How often does a traveler call and say, well that conference I was at last year, what hotel did I stay in? Well, now that answer’s right there, all of that information.

Seth: (21:16)
And in addition to just that type of stored and background information, we have current live PNRs, so you can see what’s going on, a simple click to display it and notes and other relevant information. So Cornerstone is actually aggregating and calculating things based on that data. So showing popular upcoming destinations for a company showing company policy information, right? That can come from a variety of sources, including our Booking Builder Boost product.so it’s basically opening up a whole new world of information and capability right at that point of sale, right? For that travel agent, right when they need it. Mm-hmm. . .

Speaker 6: (22:05)
Yep.

Mat: (22:08)
Excellent.I mean, and that’s it’s, it’s really, it, it’s really part of where IQ C x, our mid office platform, the cross section of the data aggregation, everything that I Q C X does starts with an acquisition of, of data and the storage of that data. Then then that opportunity now to, to bring that relevant portions of that data to bear I is what we’re talking about here. So a customer that is an IQ CX customer and a Booking builder customer, now with what we’re collaborating and what we’re building can bring those, that, that data together with booking builders front end functionality.

Seth: (22:48)
Now, the next step here, okay, is to do further analysis of that data and further corporate policy application and certain types of things that have been next to impossible to do in the past.  especially with world events over the last several years, we are seeing more and more duty of care type policies. So a maxim nber of passengers on a given aircraft, a maxim nber of passengers to a given destination.and this is all doable by properly using the data that Cornerstone has and tying it in with our point of sale application.so Lauren, why don’t we jp into the Max Passengers on a plane video and let’s,

Lierin: (23:43)
I actually got a question for you right before we,  get into that.Cayman just now asking, is the CRM connection to Booking Builder specific to Booking Builder, or,  is Cornerstone required for that piece?

Seth: (24:00)
, that’s a very good question. And,  so what you saw in that video in terms of the trip history display combined data, so notes and some of that general c r M data comes out of our database, the trip history, the aggregated trip data and so on, is all coming from Cornerstone. And we can certainly get into more specifics if that didn’t answer your question right now, we can get into that a bit later.

Lierin: (24:33)
Yep. So I will,  I will bring up the max passengers on a plane video.Seth, I noticed that there wasn’t audio on that one.so if you would like to talk to the video as it’s going on,  that might be pretty good here. Let me go ahead and bring it up.

Seth: (24:51)
As long as you promise not to mute me.

Lierin: (24:54)
I promise I won’t mute you, . All right, here we go. Max passenger’s on a plane.

Seth: (25:10)
I think you can unmute yourself, Seth. Oops, I did get muted.

Lierin: (25:15)
Anyway, you muted automatically when the video started playing. My apologies.

Seth: (25:19)
That’s okay. So what we see here is that the agent did an availability booking Builder is monitoring. So ln, if you don’t mind, I’ll ask you to pause it in a moment. Not quite yet.

Lierin: (25:37)
.

Seth: (25:39)
, so in this case, again, the agent typing in an availability, and if you pause it here, ln, you see it says the maxim nber of travelers to Hong Kong for this date has been reached. So what’s going on here is Booking Builder gets installed on the agent’s computer and it watches what’s happening in the gds, and it does a lot of things behind the scenes. So when the agent displays a p and r, we are able to determine what company that’s for, what their policy is and so on. And I know we skipped by it with the whole mute thing, but at the beginning of this video, what it showed was because it knew the company and it knew the policy, when the agent looked at flight availability, booking builder came back and indicated that in line nber four, from that availability, the maxim nber of passengers allowed by policy was already booked on that flight, right?

Seth: (26:42)
So the, the agent is getting very, what we like to call content or context relevant information. It’s not a sticky note on their screen that says no more than two passengers on a plane, but it’s, Hey, the agent just did an availability. They’re looking at flights. And flight nber four has the maxim nber of passengers. So that needs to be avoided, right? The highly relevant information right at the right time. And that has become possible because of this collaboration with Cornerstone, because we’re able to tie our systems together and Cornerstone has that data behind the scenes, and we are able to bring it right out to the agent,  to you, lyric.

Lierin: (27:33)
Excellent. Look at that. It muted us all again.all right, maybe if I close the video, we’ll be able to, there we go.

Seth: (27:53)
Yes, I’ve been wrestling with the mute button

Lierin: (27:55)
. Now we do have one more regarding unused tickets.would you like to go ahead and I’ll bring that up here for you as well, and we can show off the unused tickets.

Seth: (28:07)
Let’s do it. And maybe you can keep your promise not to mute me this time.

Lierin: (28:11)
I promise nothing this time because of the system, but I will unmute you as soon as I can.

Seth: (28:21)
, I think you have to unmute ourselves here.

Lierin: (28:23)
.

Seth: (28:33)
All right. So again, here, booking builders, watching what’s happening sees that a new booking was pulled up and through the connection with Cornerstone, right? We are displaying all of the available unused tickets, both for that traveler as well as for the company if that’s been configured as part of policy. So we show the agent considerable information about each ticket, simply clicking on the ticket and display E t r sends the appropriate command to the G D s, right? We can docent information. So as you’ll see here, the variety of choices, these are all configurable.so with just a couple of clicks, all right, the p and r can be updated with information about the unused ticket, whether or not it was used, changed, and so on.and so again in smary, what’s happening here is this overwhelming supply of unused tickets that’s out there right now is narrowed down and the tickets that are totally relevant to the current booking are displayed for that agent. And it makes it extremely easy for the agent both to manage them and to utilize them.and not only tickets specific to that traveler, but also if name changes are allowed, then tickets that belong to the company as well.

Seth: (30:21)
Mat, do you wanna get some insights into how you’re handling that part? ? No, no.

Lierin: (30:30)
It says you’re self mute. There we go. Now I promise that was the last video. So no more mute issues.

Mat: (30:36)
.that was a little bit of a coordination there between videos and muting, but anyway. No, I think you said it all Seth, I mean, the only thing I can add is that both of the,  the unused,  tickets and packs on a plane are, are live inter integrations that we have today working so,  you know, trip history, things like that are, are things that we’re working towards.and I think that now is a good segue to, to maybe talk about what we’re looking from,  from these collaborations.  and figuring out here how how we can potentially work with our customers together to, to, to maybe bring on more adoption of these and get more more ideas from them as well.

Lierin: (31:22)
I do have a question that just came in,  Seth,  question is, what is being used to trigger some of these rules? And would it be an account nber for the specific account,  or something like that? Or is there a different trigger being used?

Seth: (31:39)
, so that’s a great question. Okay. About how these are triggered. And so we kept things very simple for the videos and,  so what you’re seeing there is, for example, the unused tickets are being triggered when there’s a new name. So you’re pulling up a new p and r or you’re creating a new p and r for somebody.and behind the scenes Booking builder is monitoring and determining what the account nber is so that it can be filtered out, right? Obviously we only wanna show the appropriate tickets there.however, there’s a lot of flexibility on how things are triggered and, so a lot of this can be tailored to your specific workflows and your specific needs.

Lierin: (32:31)
, second question, and then I promise we’ll get to the collaboration aspect.besides Pax on a plane, is there a way that it will display a popup of other travel policies during the booking process, such as a benchmark from the lowest available fair rental car size hotel per diem?

Seth: (32:50)
Absolutely.and,  so our Booking Builder Genie product is all about prompting for relevant information at the time that information’s needed. So policy information can be put in there,  warnings, you name it. Okay. Specials all kinds of information, and it can be set up to come up exactly when that information is needed so that we’re not confusing people, we’re not showing too much. Yep. Now in addition,  cornerstone has certain types of information there as well for quality control checks and other things. And in the longer term, we also would be able to tap into that and show that information so that basically you’re not having to go and put the same thing in multiple places. So if you’ve already got it loaded up in I Q C X, then long-term we can connect up with IQ C X and show that at the point of sale when it’s needed.

Mat: (33:57)
Yep, yep. No, I agree. I mean, I, I think there’s some really cool interactions there between between Jeanie and the backend process as well, too. I mean, lots of times the, there, there’s sometimes over-reliance on, on backend rules processing, whether needs to be more on the front end, depending on how reservations are made.so there’s a really cool ability, I think, for us to with customers in common to really coordinate the best environments in order where to apply business rules whether it’s at the point of sale, I thought of another integration, which is,  our travel authorization process. You know, the ability potentially from a policy standpoint for the agent to see a policy based on the, the person that asked us a question,  you know, that then could potentially then trigger from the booking builder point of sale,  you know, an authorization process through cornerstone’s PCM process as well. So even in these discussions, you start thinking of potential ways for us to, to interact in, in our functionality and bring bring, bring these worlds together.

Lierin: (35:07)
You guys actually, psychically answered the next question, I think, as to whether or not it works off of iBank data or IQ CX data or both.

Mat: (35:17)
Yep. It could work, it could work through both. I mean, we’re really, we’re really focused on IQ CX right now, but a lot of the a lot of the same data that’s in iq CX is in iBank as well too.because if, especially for those customers that are going through the same workflows.

Lierin: (35:31)
Nice. So I know that we’re looking for early adopters.let’s talk a little little bit about that,  about what the next steps are about getting started.we are going to be sending everybody here a survey,  not only asking about what you thought about the webinar, but asking if you’re interested,  as well as what can our tech do for you that,  you might not have heard about or hear heard here,  you know, some qualifying questions, of course. What does our perfect beta client look like, being, of course, our clients,  and also just asking you to get involved. Are you interested in getting involved in helping shape what comes next? So, do you guys wanna talk a little bit about that, about what we’re, what’s up next?

Seth: (36:18)
, Seth, why don’t you take it away. Sure.I think the best place to start is with what we can do right now. And,  you know, still based on the events of the last few years, one of the biggest pain points that we consistently hear about is unused tickets. And Cornerstone right now can manage unused tickets, can connect them up with Booking Builder Genie, and we can display them just as you saw.so you know that’s real easy to get going.if you already are using Cornerstone for your unused tickets, it’s even simpler, right? It’s a very simple process that we set up to connect up the products.we offer a free trial so you can check it out, see how it works, there’s lots of customizations and so on.the max passengers on a plane is also available.

Seth: (37:20)
Now, there’s a little bit more potential setup behind that, but that’s available. We’d love to get more people going on that.but you know, to step back for a moment, the ideal integration scenario here, of course, is if you’re already or about to be both the Booking Builder and a Cornerstone customer.we’ve been working together for a long, long time, and all of these ideas have been driven by all of you. And this is really the first time that Cornerstone that and BookingBuilder are getting together in a format like this to really look for feedback and to really look for ideas and to more deeply explore the way our two different worlds can come together. We’ve been at each other’s conferences over the years and so on.but we’re, we’re really making a big effort here to listen and to get feedback and to drive our development in ways that this data can connect up and we can really benefit you all.

Seth: (38:34)
The last point here is about the trip history and the CRM tools. That’s something that we’re working on right now.it’s not available quite yet, but for those who would like to be part of the early adopter program, please let us know.and again, we really wanna generate a lot of feedback. We wanna fine tune what type of information you see when it appears and what you can do with that information, right? How to interact with it. So what should be clickable, what you might wanna be able to send right off to a customer, right, right from there, instead of having to talk about it.I’m gonna hand it over to Mat now to expand on. ,

Mat: (39:18)
Absolutely. I, I think, I think you said it well, that,  this is a great opportunity,  for us to engage with our, our Mutuals customers or soon to be customers, what have you.so you’ll be getting this survey here,  this week.  the follow up to this is really key. You know, we’re reaching out to, to every one of our customers that is in this,  conference today to,  to sort of gauge their interest in these interactions so,  like we’ve relied often on our customers to kind of drive our, our innovation and where we’re going.that’s the outreach that we’re looking for here. We kind of wanted to plant the seeds of things that are in production today,  for the interactions and integrations that we have,  and then some ideas that we think are, are, are worthy of,  of bringing forth and developing and,  and having hopefully customers adopt.

Mat: (40:15)
But I think,  you know, as we’ve learned over the years,  the ideas of many that come to bear on,  on innovation are the ones that,  you know, provide the most relevancy and are the most exciting for us to work on. So I’m sure there are ideas out there that Seth, you and I haven’t even thought of,  that hopefully we’re gonna get from this. So if you’re really interested in, in being a part of this,  and if you have the time and you’re gonna dedicate we’re, that’s what we’re here to do, is to,  to apply our resources and and our tools to, to help you all out in making travel more productive, more efficient, and,  continue to, to help drive the success of your businesses. So look for this survey and,  and,  and hopefully we’ll, we’ll be seeing you more often here and,  and, and interacting a little bit more and bringing these things to bear.

Lierin: (41:09)
. Now, we did get one question here,  I know is near and dear to our hearts at the moment. Will these enhancements work with ND C

Mat: (41:19)
Sure.

Lierin: (41:21)
?

Mat: (41:24)
Well, I can, I can answer. You know, I it’s like that, that’s, it’s the world of NDC is certainly,  you know, an emerging one. You know, cornerstone is,  is very much involved in it obviously from a GDS perspective, but as the GDSs are, everyone’s kind of ramping up into this. But, but we’ve we’re gathering ndc booking data from other platforms like clia, for example, the Fair Logics platform. We’re bringing that together, so that’s in our dataset as well.but these are things that are are, are to be determined and to be figured out.but we’re all in on ndc. I mean, our, our business wouldn’t exist if there wasn’t a transaction out there to automate. And,  wherever that transaction is, we’re gonna go find it, automate it, bring it into a database, and share it with booking builders for our clients.

Seth: (42:17)
And again that’s one of the beautiful things about this partnership.when an agent goes into the gds, right? Displays a name, that agent is only gonna see what’s in the gds. And it’s not always the easiest thing to see with our trip history function. As soon as you pull up a p and r for somebody, we’re gonna show you every last bit of trip information that Cornerstone has, no Mater the booking source. So whether it’s n dc, whether it’s something else, whatever it may be, we’re able to bring that right up there in front of that agent.

Lierin: (42:56)
Excellent. I do have another question.first of all, they say awesome to see you both on the same screen, and thanks for the session.feedback or question is, with enabling data in motion, do you see a further step of automation being driven by, say, AI or bots to assist the agent even further at the desktop level and applications such as trip history,  so agents can focus on the important stuff?

Seth: (43:21)
Yes, very much so. We are actively investigating and looking at the best ways to apply all of this.there’s a lot that’s really new, right? And an incredible amount of buzz that’s going on.that dust has to settle a little bit, I think. And,  you know, some of the straight up things that we see, we’ve played with can we write a booking builder plugin for chat G P T, for example? And absolutely we could, but right now it seems like that’s gonna be more gimmicky and actually probably take more time than it would save.so over time we wanna hear your ideas, we want to continue to investigate all of this, and we’re really watching closely what happens. And,  you know, as we tie in all of these different data sources and all of these different capabilities at the point of sale, I think that there will be tremendous opportunities to pull in AI and have it help prompt and guide and, and really help make those decisions.

Mat: (44:41)
Yep. I, I totally agree. I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s early days on this. I mean, I think for us, I mean, we’re, we’re just acculating use cases and ideas around this.but it, but it really becomes around the environment that you’re developing in and an open AI environment is great because it just provides massive access to the world to be able to play with these interactions and processes of ai.but in, in the world of the enterprise, in the world of business,  it, it needs to be,  it needs some rigor to it it needs some controls, it needs security, it needs all of these things that you need to bear, bring bring to implement implementing,  an AI project. So that’s where we are in kind of the early stages and in kind of structuring what,  what AI means to the business. We know it’s gonna have an impact. We know it has some areas that we’re just, we just really wanna make it  work for us.

Lierin: (45:40)
Awesome. Thank you. Well, I know that we’re running up against time, so I’m gonna bring back our key takeaways over here,  and ask if Seth and Mat have any concluding thoughts.

Mat: (45:51)
You take the first one, I’ll take the second one,

Seth: (45:54)
At this point, I just really wanna try to convey how excited I am and,  you know, this has been a long time coming. Mat and I are, are long time friends here, and,  you know, it’s great Mat to be together with you here in front of everybody and asking for ideas and feedback and getting all these wonderful questions and so on. So I also wanna express a lot of gratitude for everybody for your time being here and your wonderful questions and insights, and we really look forward to all of us working together.

Mat: (46:36)
Yep, yep. So, I, I think, I think the key takeaways for me are, are exactly what Seth said. I mean, we’ve been collaborating for a while with each other with through customers and things like that.but you know, like these key takeaways are here. I mean, we’re, we’re out to improve people’s businesses and,  the travel industry is deeply embedded in, in, in our DNA at this point, probably and how we think about life every day. I think the travel industry crosses our minds more than most people’s. But,  you know, I think we we’re encouraging our customers to tap into,  our energy and what we’ve been doing for years and,  and, and see what we can do together. So look for that survey and look forward to working with you all here soon.

Lierin: (47:26)
Excellent. Well, thank you both to Mat and Seth.like Mat just said, keep an eye out for that survey.it will be in your inbox before the end of the week. You will also be getting the recording of this session.and that should be a little bit sooner because that’ll start processing right after I get this button. So thank you both and thank you to everybody who attended. Very appreciative.

Mat: (47:50)
All right. Take care, everyone. Bye. Thank everybody. Thanks again.