March 2009 - At a time of extreme travel cost sensitivity and risk management awareness, more constituents within organizations want to examine travel data. They may want to know how compliant to policies their travelers are (and exactly where they are), how their programs and supplier contracts stack up to those of peers and how transactional data compares with billed data. And they want to know now.
Travel management companies and technology firms are bringing to market enhanced versions of their reporting tools to address those needs. What better time? Even those not selling products would agree that scrutinizing travel data today--whether by travel managers, procurement and finance executives or corporate security personnel--is more important than ever.
As vendors tout newly designed "dashboards" with improved data presentation and user interfaces, some stress substance. "People have gotten hung up on the technology and, in some cases, forgotten what the technology is supposed to do," said Greeley Koch, strategic development director at Acquis Consulting Group. "They are trying to fit what they need into the technology rather than building the technology to suit the needs."
Such tech providers as TRX Inc. have built deep drilldown capabilities "into respective budget areas," said Shane Hammond, the company's CEO. The data "needs to be useful and actionable."
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"People have gotten hung up on the technology and, in some cases, forgotten what the technology is supposed to do."
— Greeley Koch, Acquis Consulting Group strategic development director
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"We want to focus on the validity of the information we are providing, not just have it be travel transactions but also the operational component," said Dee Runyan, BCD Travel executive vice president of products, services and technology. "We have a lot more demand on us from a lot of different constituents that we may not have had before."
BCD Travel has a "reporting portal" fed by "disparate systems behind the scenes," Runyan explained. "The magic is trying to pull them together in a usable format, with the added challenge of only wanting certain group to see certain information. It has become much more consultative than it has been in the past."
At the same time, buyers seek to resolve the familiar challenge of integrating booked travel data (from agency and reservation system sources, for operational and management information) and billed travel data (from credit card feeds, favored by sourcing teams). Certain travel agencies and third-party providers claim to have at least partially met that challenge--though not necessarily within a single user interface. And most acknowledged the difficulty in making it happen.
For example, American Express offers travel-to-card variance reporting through its Axis@Work product for clients using both American Express Business Travel and an Amex card product. Tri-Pen Travel Master Technologies in fall 2008 finished developing a new "Web-based global profile to serve as a conduit that pulls disparate data streams together," including credit card feeds, according to COO Joe Monaghan.
Carlson Wagonlit Travel for about a year has been offering an integrated travel agency and corporate card reporting tool, currently supplied to clients using Amex, Diners Club and U.S. Bank payment systems. "The interest generated in that product is starting to gain momentum," said Leisha Lindsay, CWT senior director of global program optimization and security products. Meanwhile, the CWT tool since November 2008 allows clients to set regularly scheduled e-mail reports. Other tools include similar capabilities.
For buyers who want to be proactive, the Amex system has "58 different metrics across air, car, hotel--by dollar amount, by carrier, by location, by all sorts of reason codes--that can trigger" email notifications, according to Amex Business Travel director of marketing Richard Chinitz.
The recently released second-generation of Prime Numbers Technology's Travel GPA notifies specified recipients about noncompliant transactions, bookings that exceed cost thresholds, unfavorable rate comparisons to benchmarks and other red flags. In addition to air, hotel and car rental contract comparisons to peer companies, Travel GPA offers key performance benchmarks, "so you can compare your own performance and goals to 'best practice' averages" at peer companies, said Prime Numbers president Rock Blanco.
Looking ahead, Amex and other vendors are focused on providing "what-if" analyses to help determine what programs would look like in different scenarios, as well as performance tracking against specific targets--a "more surgical and precise view of clients' travel spend," according to Chinitz. Some tools, like a new CWT product release slated for March, highlight demand management and pretrip authorization reports. Most endeavor to provide ever-greater customization and flexibility.
"Every corporation seems to have a different idea of what their scorecard looks like," said Tri-Pen's Monaghan. "There are different metrics within corporations that define success." A next step, added TRX's Hammond, "is a much more consultative design and efforts to understand clients' true needs and problems."
