Rearden Commerce mashes up Total Dining Experience

Rearden Commerce has developed a comprehensive Web-based platform for handing employee business services, such as airline tickets, car rentals, car services, event tickets and package shipping, within corporations. I wrote about Rearden Commerce when it first launched in 2005. The latest element of the Rearden Commerce service, which works with 135,000 suppliers, is a dining reservations mashup that works within the cost management policies and financial systems of corporations.

The Total Dining Experience mashes up content and features from dining information and services such as OpenTable and Zagat, with geographic data from Google Maps and Maponics. The service allows employees to find, compare, book reservations, invite guests to restaurants and coordinate with calendars, within the framework of corporate policies around dining out. Rearden Commerce also hooked up with Rewards Network to offer customers rebates on member restaurants. 

The ability to aggregate services, such as dining on the company's cash, and to mash them up with maps, transportation or other Web services, and also to link into corporate identity and access and financial systems is a good demonstration of what service-orientation and mashups can do to deliver value to an enterprise.

It also turns out that many corporations suffer from employees working outside the system, making reservations and not taking advantage of their negotiated rates for business services. Having a system of record for business services can bring cost savings and allow corporations tighter control over who gets to spend what.  

See  also: ReadWriteWeb for a look into Rearden Commerce