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BTN honors Futch.

Article Excerpt
Business Travel News this month named Wal-Mart director of global travel services Duane Futch Travel Manager of the Year. Futch during the past 12 months and beyond has spearheaded initiatives within his company and on behalf of the industry at large to garner the distinction.

"Most significant among this buyer's accomplishments is the flight-testing of a global approach through which the company has consolidated strategic supplier contracts, Sabre global distribution system services and payment system UATP to create a unique U.S. point-of-sale structure that has pushed the envelope for Airlines Reporting Corp. Corporate Travel Department operations and is eliminating barriers to the international financial settlement of the ticketing process," BTN Editor-in-Chief David Meyer said this month at the award reception in Chicago.

At the crux of Wal-Mart's travel program is an increasingly global ARC-accredited Corporate Travel Department and strong cooperation with suppliers to invent a unique approach to travel purchasing, settlement and payment through a Bentonville, Ark., point of sale.

"Currently, we have our ARC number at the home office in Bentonville. With Sabre's assistance, we've developed pseudo-cities with those countries we've converted to our CTD umbrella," Futch said. "Presently, we've taken out travel management companies in the U.K., Mexico and Canada and replaced them with our own in-house travel professionals. We now have the GetThere tool, which resides on the desks in all those countries. If you book in the U.K., it then transfers that data into the U.S. It is then e-ticketed in the U.S., the booking is then transferred back...

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