The recent The View from the Top show highlighted an impressive collaboration between Microsoft, Benivo, and Amadeus Cytric demonstrating how strategic partnerships can drive innovation in corporate mobility and travel. The initiative focused on streamlining and automating travel arrangements for Microsoft's "guests" — non-employees like interns, job candidates, and speakers who travel for Microsoft-sponsored activities.
What makes this partnership particularly noteworthy is the agility and speed with which these organizations work together. In just a couple of months, the teams developed an integrated solution that automates travel booking processes through APIs, eliminating manual work and improving the guest experience.
The collaboration showcases several key success factors:
- Shared Technical Expertise: As noted during the show, having "incredible technical minds on both sides" who "spoke the same language" was crucial for rapid development. This technical alignment enabled fast iteration and problem-solving.
- Agile Development Approach: During the show, Microsoft's team praised Benivo's ability to iterate quickly and solve problems - highlighting how Benivo's weekly check-ins consistently delivered solutions to identified issues by the following week. This rapid response and problem-solving capability was described as "a rhythm of engineering agility" that Microsoft would struggle to match internally due to competing priorities.
- Scalable Innovation: Amadeus Cytric approached the project with broader applications in mind, developing solutions that could benefit their wider customer base. As Lisa explained, "Every time we work on a project with a particular customer...it's always with the idea in mind that this can then be utilized for the rest of our customers."
- Focus on User Experience: The partnership has resulted in what they described as a "significantly better experience" compared to competitors, reinforcing Microsoft's reputation as an innovative employer and host.
For Microsoft, working with agile partners like Benivo and Amadeus Cytric has been crucial given internal resource constraints. As Microsoft's Ann and Brook explained, "The company has very aspirational goals for our technology, and sometimes our internal tools just don't meet that baseline for assigning engineering resources. So if we didn't have good partners like Amadeus and Benivo, we wouldn't be able to deliver this."
This collaboration illustrates how strategic partnerships can help large organizations overcome internal constraints and deliver innovative solutions quicker than they could alone. It's a model that other companies might well consider as they look to transform their own mobility and travel programs.
You can access the complete show recording here. Contact us to learn more about Benivo's Relocation Services + Mobility Tech.
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