"The company was in a tough spot when I joined,"
Forbes said of the T&E provider he's led for the past seven years. "It's
taken a lot, and taken a lot from me personally, to get where we ended up,
which is great." KDS has proved a success story in building
consumer-friendly tools that are no longer alternatives but now form the
preferred way to manage T&E. Proof: Mega travel management company American
Express Global Business Travel acquired KDS in October. Thanks to Forbes'
decision to sell, the T&E start-up has resources with which to scale up and
reach more travel programs with its products.
Personally more inclined to innovating than to integrating,
Forbes leaves the company this month. But under his direction, KDS spent a lot
of time and energy on strategy, innovation and differentiating its products,
aiming for "new solutions to old problems." And innovate they did.
Within two years of Forbes' arrival, KDS launched Neo, a
mobile, automated, door-to-door corporate T&E booking tool with a consumer
user experience. Travelers could book flight, hotel and rental car all at once
by inputting three factors: origin, destination and arrival time.
"Of course, those products were not for everyone and
not everyone signed up to use them. But what we did is make it very clear to
our customers and partners who we were as a company and why they should choose
us. … And we started to win more deals once that became understood in the
market," Forbes said.
KDS's strategy to convince customers was not that it was a
better company or product but that it was a better approach to the existing
problem. "The market reacted incredibly well to that," he said.