Leveraging travel expense data

Most travel programs can easily identify out of policy expenses, but are you leveraging that information to prevent exceptions in the future?

Based on a recent GBTA/AirPlus study, nearly 80% of programs look for out of policy costs on expense reports. But only 54% of programs regularly reconcile expense data against what was booked for travel, and only 55% use expense data to adjust or inform their travel policy!

Expense data can be useful to understand employee behavior and why exceptions are occurring. It offers an opportunity to address those concerns and potentially alleviate traveler friction and/or increase policy compliance. Pre-ticketing information, available through CTM’s SMART Data, allows you to monitor traveler bookings and capture policy exceptions before they occur.

Analyzing policy, exceptions and expense data can help you adjust program parameters to mitigate out of policy requests at the point of sale and address points of traveler friction which impede travelers’ productivity and job performance.

Here are four ways CTM works with our clients to leverage expense data to drive travel policy development and program initiatives:

1. Refining rate limits.

Are your travelers frequently choosing hotels that are out of your preferred network? Are your travel patterns putting travelers in high capacity major cities during events that raise daily rates? CTM can help you analyse your exception data to implement a hotel policy with appropriate rate caps per night, or scalable rates based on best available rates in major cities. CTM also has access to technology that provides rate integrity checks, ensuring that the contracted room type, with fixed discount, has availability at the times your travelers require them.

2. Align policy with user groups and reward road warriors.

Are certain groups of travelers consistently expensing travel reservations that are out of policy for due cause? We tailor policy levels to multiple user groups while also considering individual preferences. This allows you to set out-of-policy exceptions and alerts for general user groups, while still catering to your elite travelers, top producers, and executives.

3. Mitigate direct buying and leakage.

We help our clients establish adoption campaigns, design supplier promotions, identify program ambassadors, and engage reluctant users directly. CTM can help you communicate with travelers through traditional and non-traditional channels directed at driving traveler choice and behavior. We apply policy and tailored messaging to our booking tools, mobile applications, gamification tools, scripting, direct traveler and agent communications and more.

We can also bundle the flight and accommodation into a singular booking, with no additional costs. This enhances corporate duty of care by ensuring traveler movements can be monitored easily and effectively through one booking.

4. Providing technology to make SMART decisions

In addition to our personalized service, CTM gives you the tools needed to quickly and efficiently identify possible cost savings in the purchasing and booking process; through predictive forecasting, behavior and trend analysis and industry benchmarking. Furthermore, access to frequently updated pre-ticketing data allows you to capture and respond to policy breaches and reduce spend through improved policy compliance. This is all supported through a single, global reporting hub.

Is your TMC helping you leverage your expense data into actionable travel program strategy? If you are not leveraging your expense data into going forward travel policy strategies, you may risk advancing overall program goals, continued leakage, poor program visibility and increased cost.

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