We have known since the 2013 edition that KDS Neo was living up to its name, and we were left to wonder what innovations the 2014 vintage of KDS Now might bring. And yet. In front of an audience of some 800 finance, purchasing and business travel professionals, Dean Forbes, CEO of KDSproved that the tool now responds by voice too. Voice recognition means you can plan and book your business trip in a matter of seconds, making KDS Neo more intuitive than ever. This quest for user-friendliness is also illustrated by another new feature: the integration of the tool with the Outlook calendar, which allows you to extract information relating to a meeting with a simple click on the dedicated icon, to access the timeline characteristic of KDS Neo. Simpler, faster, but also more comprehensive, since the tool now also integrates information relating to public transport in some fifty countries around the world.
In addition to these practical improvements, the KDS teams have been working on another crucial area of travel management, expense claim management, and have come up with two new tools that are just as innovative: KDS Neo Expense and KDS Neo Receipt. Both solutions aim to simplify the collection of receipts by using OCR character recognition technology, followed by the tedious exercise of filling in the reimbursement form. The tedious lines of data are replaced by a playful calendar, which contextualises each transaction by assigning more explicit icons according to the type of expense (restaurants, taxis). All this is synchronised with KDS Neo, to automatically retrieve booking data and thus improve visibility of expenditure, and spot any inconsistencies or other errors. " Do less, get more "is the slogan being hammered home by the KDS staff.
Hard on the heels of the presentation of these new features for 2014 - which will be available in their entirety from next March - KDS managers were keen to look to the future, by imagining what tomorrow's Neo could be. The tool could eventually be used to plan and optimise a meeting between different employees, identifying the ideal location for the meeting, its date, and the best options for each user to get there. " Do nothing, get everything "This is what KDS believes tomorrow's business travel will look like.
