Rearden Commerce™

Foster City, CA - December 10, 2008

Rearden Commerce, the leading on-demand platform that helps companies buy and manage services online, announced today the results of its inaugural quarterly trend survey of corporate travel account managers. The top travel priority going into 2009 for businesses is compliance as they work to drive cost savings, according to 68 percent of travel managers surveyed. In addition, 88 percent of travel managers surveyed have seen a marked increase in stringent policies and tighter requirements for pre-trip approvals.

“Travel and entertainment is the second largest controllable expense, behind labor, so it is no surprise companies are looking to control this expense in today’s economic climate,” said Patrick Grady, CEO of Rearden Commerce. “We help companies establish compliance guidelines and put policies in place — from stipulating pre-trip approvals, to guiding to travel alternatives all of which are easily done through our platform, to help companies of all sizes realize meaningful cost savings. Our customers experience high policy compliance rates because the Rearden Personal Assistant is so easy to use.”

The survey also found:

• 71 percent of travel managers are seeing a significant decline in the number of business trips overall.
• 82 percent say price has now taken precedence over comfort and convenience; a drastic shift from the first half of 2008.
• 68 percent say compliance is the top priority for businesses in order to drive cost-savings. They expect to see more stringent policies in areas including pre-trip approvals and advance ticket purchasing.
• They also expect to see an increase in Web-conferencing, less-expensive hotel bookings, day trips for business and encouragement for employees to self-modify business travel habits.

Rearden Commerce surveyed its top reseller partners that provide travel-related services to thousands of companies across multiple industries to find this data. The respondents included travel account managers at some of the largest travel management companies in the United States, including Best Travel, Cain Travel, Travizon, World Travel Inc., amongst others.

About Rearden Commerce

Rearden Commerce has developed the next-generation platform for commerce. The Rearden Commerce™ Platform combines a plethora of applications, services, content and powerful personalization capabilities that enable the most relevant and meaningful transactions possible. The Platform connects a network of more than 6,500 business customers across every market segment to 160,000 suppliers. More than 3 million knowledge workers and millions of consumers have access to the platform via the Rearden Personal Assistant™, which transforms today's chaotic Web and extraneous data into a highly personalized “internet assistant” experience. It simplifies a user's life contextually based upon their identity, location, and situation.

Rearden Commerce solutions deliver a new approach to spend management in the travel, procurement and finance sectors. The solutions are distributed globally by over 60 strategic partners including American Express, JP Morgan Chase, Paychex, and most leading travel management companies. For more information, visit reardencommerce.com.

Press Contact

Alicia diVittorio
For Rearden Commerce
650.376.8719
alicia.divittorio@reardencommerce.com