Rather, it reminded us that we're putting our own lives at risk by getting on any type of boat without fully explaining to everyone coming with us the importance of both following safety instructions and going with your gut instinct in times of crisis (i.e., not waiting around to be told what to do). Under less moribund circumstances than watching the death toll climb from the Carnival Costa Concordia tragedy, our dinnertime conversation preceding a planned trip would be more inclined to discuss the economics, procurement and supply chain operating procedures of cruise lines rather than their approach to safety.

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Amidst all the news coming out of SAP early last week with the Crossgate deal and a nasty head cold going around the office that's slowed the usual pace of developing current content, we've been slow to cover some major news at Rearden Commerce, including a large funding round and an acquisition. Last week, Rearden acquired a company that may not seem like a fit with the procurement or network space at first, but in fact, is quite a fascinating potential fit if they can successfully plug the capability into their platform and drive real adoption. The news we speak of here of course is Rearden's acquisition of HomeRun, a self-described "social-buying service" and platform which "powers group commerce programs for many of the best known consumer web sites," according to Rearden.

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Economists like to point to the "Big Mac Index" to understand the relative purchasing power and cost of buying a burger in different world markets. Yet in the corporate travel world, at least in North America, a slightly more expensive cut of beef may be a far more accurate predictor of where prices are headed and our own corporate travel buying power. A recent article that hit the Medill news service suggests that Morton's Restaurant group performance is riding a slowly expanding tide of business travel. According to the story, "The Chicago-based upscale steakhouse company, which is reliant on business travel and entertainment spending, saw a precipitous drop in its sales during the Great Recession."

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In the first post in this series, I set the stage for our 2011 coverage of the travel procurement market. And I also hopefully established myself as someone with a complete lack of travel specific procurement credentials (yet broader procurement knowledge). Ironically, this probably makes people like me more qualified than many so-called experts in the field to pick apart a category where opportunity knocks. But what doors are the best ones to bash in (or more quietly pick the lock) on first in the travel area? Reading between the lines of a recent Travel Procurement study can help us begin to get the lay of the land when it comes to dispensing with current program models and components that are cheating us of potential savings opportunities.

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Let me preface this post by noting that I have absolutely zero experience in travel procurement as a sourcing professional, but fifteen years as an active consumer of it, learning the consultant-tricks-of-the-trade by doing everything from flying preferred carriers (even when they're not authorized) to maximizing the chance of upgrades through sometimes backchannel means to, of course, circumventing corporate travel systems when there's a better deal on Hotwire, Priceline, etc. Besides this inexperience, you should take all of my advice with a grain of salt because in my last company, FreeMarkets, I also managed to earn a dressing down from the CFO by "damaging our relationship with United" and jeopardizing a big kickback (ahem, rebate check) after an incident when I was left stranded at midnight at Dulles with no recompense and decided to escalate matters myself (tried and true sourcing geeks often take matters into their own hands when a supplier mishaps impacts them personally, even when they're not the category owner).

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See our initial coverage of Rearden's acquisition of Ketera here.

One thing has been for sure in terms of Ketera in recent years, and that's the fact that few dispute whether the vendor has gotten enough at bats relative to competitors in the P2P and network enablement market to judge whether or not it can hold its own in the broader sector. Spend Matters has rarely seen Ketera in any new enterprise eProcurement, invoice management or network enablement deals on either side of the Atlantic in recent years and it's our hypothesis that much of the vendor's sustaining revenue has come from other areas. This appears true, despite company positioning that suggests it has entirely gone down the path of delivering a network-based business model. Spend Matters believes this situation brings opportunity to Rearden Commerce, Ketera's new owner, which has had a strong focus on select "personal services" category procurement revolving around travel in recent years.

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