Serko is an NSX and ASX-listed corporate travel management software company, with over 2 million users worldwide. The brief for Serko Mobile was to address two significant developments in the corporate travel sector – decentralised booking and administration, and the rise of mobile as the primary screen for travelers.

Serko wanted to push the envelope in corporate travel, creating a world-leading mobile extension of their desktop travel management product.

I facilitated a series of Design Sprints (https://www.gv.com/sprint/) with the Serko product and leadership teams, in which we collaborated to design and test a prototype of the app in just five days.

The result was Serko Mobile, an app that provides corporate travelers with the ability to book, view and edit flights, hotel reservations, and rental car bookings on the go, with built-in approvals workflow and travel policy enforcement. It also includes Apple Watch support, an iBeacon bag tracker, and an intelligent ‘travel concierge’ that monitors the traveler’s location to ensure they never miss a flight.

In initial discussions, I focused heavily on the distinctions between corporate and recreational travel. It was my contention that corporate travelers were concerned primarily with the business to be conducted rather than the journey itself, and that if we were able to present a single itinerary that supported their business requirements this would be preferable to making them select every detail.

Together we created Serko Mobile - a mobile app for business travellers that returns a complete itinerary (flights, hotel, rental car and airport transfers) in response to a single date-location search. This feature was a world first, and continues to present a significant competitive advantage for Serko.