Zegato Solutions Implements VA Electronic Travel Management System

WASHINGTON, DC – (June 9, 2003) – Zegato Solutions, Inc. today announced that the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has awarded the company a  contract for its Zegato Travel Service (Zegato) for enterprise wide travel management.  As the sole service provider for the project, Zegato Solutions has begun work on implementation at VA locations. 

According to Don Bailey, president, Zegato Solutions, “The Department of Veterans Affairs has a vital mission in caring for our Nation's veterans.  We are pleased to be able to assist in this mission by bringing them a world class travel system.  We have worked with VA for more than eight years, providing travel management applications for a number of sites nationwide.  We look forward to implementing the totally new Zegato approach to end-to-end travel expense management.  The VA has already won national recognition for its concept of a new, streamlined system for travel management enterprise wide.  Now it’s our job to roll it out for the VA..  In partnership with the VA's professional team of program managers, we look forward to a smooth and seamless integration and implementation.”

Veterans Affairs is second only in size to the Department of Defense as a Cabinet level department.  VA serves the needs of more than 70 million former service personnel, their families and survivors from offices and medical facilities organized into 22 networks nationwide. 

Zegato Solutions has spent the past 15 years focused on public sector business process reengineering (BPR) and systems planning, design, development and integration, including automated travel management.  The Zegato Travel Service offering is a totally new, hosted service for business travel management that was first deployed by the International Trade Commission (ITC) in 2001.  Zegato was implemented for all ITC travelers in only 15 days.  The service manages ITC’s entire travel process via the Internet – from document preparation and approvals to booking reservations, through travel card expense management and reconciliation.  

The Zegato methodology incorporates all the functionality of an end-to-end travel management system with the flexibility and simplicity of an ASP or optional client hosted web-based service that enables 24X7 access using any common browser or Palm OS PDA in a secure, paperless environment.  The system performs a pre-trip compliance review for all federal travel regulations, and interfaces with existing agency financial applications.  And with Zegato Solutions acting as an ASP, there is no investment in IT infrastructure or added agency staffing.

Zegato also interfaces with any government contract travel agency, as well as all Global Distribution System (GDS) options.  This conforms to the recent trend to reduce federal travel costs by entering into fee-based services with travel agencies.  But Zegato takes this process another step by offering its own optional travel services transparently within the system to further reduce costs and simplify the reservations process through more efficient workflow management.

“We consider ourselves a leader in the marketplace,” said Bailey.  “We’re not waiting for federal agencies to demand improvements in functionality.  Zegato incorporates emerging travel technologies into a service with the flexibility to configure immediately to the needs of our customers as those needs change.”