When Greg Meyer helped launch iJET Travel Risk Management in 1999, the idea was to provide travel-related risk management services, such as alerts to travel agencies. Then 9/11 happened, and Meyer, currently iJET CTO, says the company wanted to shift its focus, and do so fast.
“On 9/11, we changed our business processes in two and a half hours,” Meyer says. Instead of travel agents, the company targeted multinational corporations that sent employees abroad on business travel. New services included the ability for companies to track and communicate with traveling employees.
Demonstrating further agility, when the war in Iraq officially ended, iJET once again responded promptly. The latest iteration of the company provides “high-risk, high-threat, on-the-ground information to address a specific mission or situation,” says Meyer. Included in iJET’s current mission are services geared toward government agencies and multinational corporations that send workers to places rife with civil unrest.
The ability to change on a dime, says Meyer, has been made possible by an IT platform that has “an agile, plug-in architecture,” including a geographic information system that gives customers multiple layers of real-time risk information, accessible through a global map interface.
And by risk, there’s more than just geopolitical events and terrorism. Many of iJET’s nearly 400 customers have assets such as stores, branch offices, factories and personnel in areas prone to earthquakes. In the event of an earthquake, iJET can deliver information via a number of customer interfaces that outline where corporate assets are in relation to the earthquake, and that can include eyewitness accounts of damage.
Unless the world stops changing, iJET is likely to continue reinventing itself. By building a platform that enables the company to implement new technology quickly, Meyer believes iJET can adapt yet again on a moment’s notice.