Video: Data-Driven Travel Programs: How Top Companies Maximize ROI | Duration: 2276s | Summary: Data-Driven Travel Programs: How Top Companies Maximize ROI

Transcript for "Data-Driven Travel Programs: How Top Companies Maximize ROI": Hello, everyone. Welcome to today's webinar. Just a few things before we get started. We have Imbursed in Motion. It is coming back for 2025 and it is in Nashville. So be sure to register. We will have presentations just like this one today at Imbursed in Motion. You can interact with our subject matter experts as well as additional customers for great networking opportunities. In addition, I want to let you know that next week on 29th, we are having a webinar, new year, new policy, updating your T and E processes for 2025. The link is in the document tab on the right, which I'll talk about more shortly. And, we think this will also be an excellent one and a good companion piece to the one today. Alright. Let's get started. There's lots to cover. So welcome to today's webinar, data driven travel programs, how top companies maximize ROI. We, the important things for you to remember, if you have any questions, there's an engagement tab on the right hand side. You can put your questions in the q and a tab. If you wanna ask them anonymously, just say hide name. We also have several documents for you to review in the tab, including the link to the Inverse Motion Registration and the webinar for next week, as well as things that we're sharing during this webinar and additional information about our travel solutions. And if you like I've mentioned before, if you have any questions, be sure to ask them, and we will get started right now. So, Rodrigo, if you wanna hop on board, I will share the agenda quickly. Yeah. Go ahead, Rodrigo. Well, thank you very much. And hello, everybody. Good morning, good afternoon, depending on your time zone. I'm Rodrigo Cotello, senior solutions consultant with Imbursed. I've been in the travel industry now for over 20 years. It hurts to say it. I always feel young with it because it changes all the time, and it has had such a remarkable evolution. And as the new technologies arise, this evolution is goes even faster. So that's the scale, you know, into the innovation. I am so pleased to announce that with us, we have also a special guest. It's a he's a senior data engineer from, Emburse as well, and this is, my friend, Tom Gerke. I'm gonna be starting a fireside chat with him mostly because each time that I collaborate with him, everything is news to me. I'm learning, you know, lots of different things, and I purposely have asked him, you know, not for us to try to essay this conversation because I wanted to be very, you know, easy to follow. And as I hear him, you know, correct me and my assumptions and things in the industry, I wanted to share with you what I feel as I'm learning. So, oh my god. I've never even thought of that. To kick off, today's presentation, I'd like to show you a little bit of our vision, you know, at Imbursed and how we're seeing together t and e, and how this data is also affecting, but most of it, how we are impacting, you know, the actual end user experience. So we're gonna go through that, and then we're gonna start thinking about when do we bring different, you know, points of view or, as my friend Tom says, the actual eye into in which you look at the data, you know, can affect, you know, in where it's worth investing your time so that you get the best out of the travel data being analyzed. But let's kick off with our vision, you know, how we consider both travel and expense together. Paul needs to book a 3 day business trip. He is presented with his preferred air and hotel options that are within policy. He submits a pre approval request that automatically adds per diem averages, taxes, and transfers based on historical insights. Melissa receives auto notification of his request, which is preapproved since it's within her budget and in policy. With one click, a virtual card is issued, and Paul confirms his travel. Compliant travel with a secure payment gives the finance team pre spend visibility and peace of mind. Paul has all travel info in Imbursed Go including curated destination content and per d m policies. Imbursed reshop works in the background to ensure Paul gets the best hotel rate and airfare before he travels. A better rate and fare are found and rebooked automatically. Paul is notified with his seat assignments and hotel room embersgo of rainy weather at his destination and packs an umbrella. When Paul lands, he's notified of perdmspertravel policy and a ride share suggestion to the hotel. With ride share integration, the expense is automatically added to his report. At check-in, he sees that wifi, late checkout, and breakfast are included in his corporate rate. Paul taps to pay with his virtual card for lunch, is prompted to capture his receipt, provide information for any additional guests, and select if a client billable expense or not. Throughout his trip, Paul captures receipts, automating expense report creation. As business evolves, finance has flexibility to update rules and workflows so expenses are mapped to the correct category or department. Back home, Paul's itemized hotel bill is added through the hotel app integration. His expense report is ready, but he is proactively prompted for a missing expense, airport transfer. His mileage is auto calculated, reducing effort for Paul and improving accuracy for finance with one click he submits. Melissa is notified that the expense report is auto approved since all is compliant, easy to review and fast approvals. Next, the expense report is automatically audited and cleared of any fraudulent spend, helping finance to minimize risk, and IT is reassured that their data is secure with a broad range of global security and data processing requirements. Audrey, the controller, gains proactive recommendations to build out future budgets and optimize costs from a combined view of travel, expense, sustainability, and payments data. The future of T and E delivers compliance through convenience with innovative travel, expense, AP, and payment solutions. Alright. So that's the first thing, you know, that I wanted to kick off, you know, this webinar with, you know, aligning ourselves in more or less in how we're looking at innovating and the future. But now from all of those characters in the video, the one that is in charge of finding means to optimize, you know, the costs was Audrey there. And what today we're showing you is just a little bit of a glimpse of what we see. Fortune 500 companies, mostly in managed travel scenario, basically, that they have an an actual travel agency, travel management company to work with, you know, that then gives them the means and the data to monitor how the different, you know, type of, you know, expenses are most more important for you to dig in. Now the analytical thinking that I personally like to bring in my experience and what I've seen when I chat with people into, you know, understanding the different KPIs are what I call, you know, the actual w's of the data program. So what I'm showing you here, you know, it is how I slice it. It's the 5 w's, the when, the where, the who, the why, and the what. And with the when, you can narrow down a given period in time. Right? It sets a benchmark of comparison also, so So you can always think about year over year or how it's our performance versus last month as you're tracking and keeping your KPIs, you know, mostly think about the win. The where allows for the data to be filtered within geographical boundaries. Right? Where are my passengers now, or where are these contracts that I have? Is it a hotel close by to the office that we always have a flat rate with, you know, for people to come in, you know, once they're visiting? Then on the who right, you know, the different, you know, trans who's booking what and in and out, You know, the why providing, basically, the reason for travel. Personally, the why, it is always the one that brings the most attention in the auditing process. You know, the reason, you know, for things as, you know, may have done it in your own expense management programs and travel, reason for travel, for the trip requisitions as well. Now the what is the actual detail. Those are the rows, you know, within any type of report, you know, that you do, the true details of each transaction, you know, that you go through. But now what's the one question missing for the 5 w's in all of the possible questions in humanity? It is how. And, this one, it is more subjective. Every company solving to the how, you know, to all of the conundrum of the other questions possible in different ways. So the one that we align with here at Imberese, it is driving compliance through convenience. So this is, you know, the actual motto in our experience and how this Fortune 5 500 companies are doing it. If you provide a convenient technology set, you know, for the actual end users, then it's when they actually adopted more. And then at the same time, you know, this actual compliance, you know, it is what you want to monitor not only, you know, to your own employees, but the actual vendor suppliers of sorts. Now speaking about suppliers, we would like to start a poll, and I wanna, you know, ask Lauren, you know, to also come back. We're gonna be introducing, you know, a poll, you know, before we go deeper into the actual or, you know, what is the actual most valuable asset that you can monitor to get, you know, better results in the ROI. So the poll is launched. You can fill it out in the poll tab at the right. We'll keep it open for about, like, 20, 30 seconds, and then we'll take a look at the results. Let's see. Air is at the top right now. The lodging's following behind. Let's keep it open another 10 seconds, so be sure to get your answers in. We want to know how you are looking at this right now to help guide this conversation. Yeah. I think we're at a good spot, so I'll be closing the poll right now. Thank you very much, Lauren. And I guess, you know, we'll show the results, you know, as well. I see them on screen right now. So the first thing, you know, I would like to deconstruct them all, you know, and the different things that we've seen in the past. So, you know, air specifically, you know, it is you know, on these suppliers that we are seeing now to a direct connection to you, it is gonna end up, you know, similar to public transportation to some degree. It, it subjectively, I've seen more fares come down, and airlines are not going directly to consumers. So some of the previous hurdles, you know, that there have been in the past, you know, which is, you know, more related into always having to funnel, you know, all of through a travel management company, are challenged by the airlines. They have been the last years. So that is one of our options and and a big takeaway. You know, basically, you know, potentially, there's not a lot of bang for the buck investing your time on it. Now the next one, which is lodging, this is where we believe it is the most, you know, potential opportunity, you know, to get the most ROI in auditing. You know, mostly, if you have different contracts, how are you even monitoring the behavior, you know, of the actual contracts that you have out there, especially when you have multiple of them? So answering to the question, right, how Fortune 500 companies solve and look at this, they're paying very, very close attention, you know, as well. They invest tens of 1,000 of dollars even in cleaning up their hotel data because of the ROI that it brings. So that is the reality, you know, of it. There's a lot of attention into lodging, which we're gonna deconstruct, you know, deeper. Now, you know, nobody answered the cars. I was happy to see that. You know, we also see those margins and everything is so crystal clear there as well, which is there's no much room for manipulation, but yet we do see still a lot of, you know, more corporate direct, you know, deals and involvement. And, you know, also, it is potentially depending if you put a lot of stock on it and the nature of the company that you work for. If it's worth investing the time, of course, you guys will measure it. I'm trying to narrow down our options to truly, you know, focusing in the ones with the ROI. And then the last one that I'm bringing here is Roehl. So, you know, with Roehl specifically, you know, it is so, more related today into either employee convenience or sustainability efforts, especially in Europe, that we also see little, you know, to a lot of success other than our rewards program, you know, business specific type of deal that you may have with the different suppliers at a regional, you know, situation as well. So, you know, from all of those, you know, we believe, you know, that lodging, you know, it's where it's at. And now go I'm going to share some examples, you know, into, how to you know, what are the models to taking a look at the hotel data, which is basically mirrored after the different, you know, hotel contracts out there that you can put. So, you know, what I'm going to share now, it is examples, you know, seen used by large companies, you know, on this. So, the first thing, you know, to always, you know, begin, you know, it's the summary. You know, they look at the summary basically to understand and weight their hotel program. You know, in this case, you know, which percentage have I audited, you know, from the total sample rate? You know, some companies would just audit 30% and then do mathematical projections, which is a good representation as a sample size for it. Then how many deals do I have out there? How many contracts is the other thing monitored? Right? Especially, this Fortune 500 companies have offices all over the world, and they're looking, you know, at that, and each region of the world will bring their own contracts for it. And this allows them to bring all of that together in a single, you know, place for it. You also see at the bottom in this scenario how it is very incisive to take a look at the total weight, you know, the spend, the actual loss savings opportunity. That's why, as I mentioned, companies with tens of 1,000, sometimes in the 6 digits into just cleaning up hotel data because of this. That, it is what we see. You know, it is such a large opportunity when you have large numbers of hotels, you know, in it, then lost savings, you know, from more from a chain point of view, you know, as well. Now going deeper into truly auditing, you know, the other things that they do, you know, it is have the different type of contracts out there being monitored that are being respected by the supplier. So in this scenario, you know, you see here flat, dynamic, and dual. So a flat rate is more like a flat rate, you know, that you have, you know, with, you know, a specific supplier. So, you know, that is, you know, something like a unique rate. Could be, as I mentioned, the hotel closest to headquarters. You have something directly negotiated with them. Those are flat rate. Dynamic are based out of a percentage of discount, you know, of the actual, the rate that has been given you by the hotel. You know? And in this case, dual, you know, basically, you know, it is more, you know, of a dynamic with the ceiling. So you are off of a percentage, you know, of the actual, you know, offered rate, but there's also ceilings and boundaries on them. What they look at it is truly how many times my my contract has been respected or the you know, what those hotel contracts are about. It's about the commitment, you know, to prioritizing, you know, the the inventory. So the providing the actual inventory. My apologies. So they have a commitment in contract with you, you know, of a in percentage of time that the actual rate is going to be available. This is a great, you know, example of a great behavior. And I see you know, mostly what you can do as you sort through the data, it is looking for this outliers. How in this scenario, right, I wasn't even offered my contracted rate, and then they go to details to get more granular, potentially even pick up the phone, close your sales rep. You know, these are the different, you know, bookings. You know? And then you have their, you know, bar, which is the actual best available rate, you know, that you that you have, you know, available to it, you know, versus, you know, the book rate and basically the actual type of details, you know, that you can audit. So you can always drill into the specifics. And this is a great model, you know, utilized, you know, by Fortune 500 companies into how far, you know, they are actually going, you know, to be able, you know, to make sure that their vendors are doing it right by them. You know, here, you have the top 50 analysis, you know, as well, in which you do see the performance and the amount, you know, spent on each one of the properties. This is a very popular visualization, you know, as well. And then it's also combined, you know, with the different, you know, percentages, you know, the compliance, you know, of the actual chain, you know, on it. There's something that my last conversation with Tom, you know, who I'm bringing in a minute, you know, he basically told me, well, it depends how you look at the data. You know? And that is accomplished also for as a recommendation. I guess that's a good takeaway. Make sure that you have all the different filters, you know, to zoom in into the data with a different point of view. It could be your department, your division, a region of the world. Right? And even potentially, you know, if you work in a billable environment, if it's something's billable or not. So we see this, you know, a lot, you know, and it's it's a great opportunity and a great takeaway, you know, to make sure that you can take a look at the, you know, actual data. So you may be just in the middle of a negotiation, you know, with, you know, a specific property or a specific chain. Right? And I can just make a selection, you know, and then I can I I can actually just see that data? So all of that is always gonna be there. You can do the search chain specific, and this is more or less what, you know, the actual travel managers, you know, do. That's why they see this technology because they're on top of their contracts. Generally, it's more of a study as I'm ready to RFP or as I'm ready to take a look at, more like reactive this access to the data in real time into how these contracts are behaving as they're happen, you know, it is greater visibility. And it all depends how far, you know, down the rabbit hole, I guess, you know, the different, you know, parties, you know, are willing to go for it. To answer this calling, right, you know, in this webinar and the value that, you know, I hope that you're getting out of this presentation, it is that first, you know, hotels where it's where it's at. You know? Because all of these contracts and their nature, you know, allow you to have, you know, the different means to monitor as they progress, you know, into the commitment, you know, that has been established. Alright. So apart from the hotels, I also brought for you another example as well into how companies, you know, are looking at the actual travel data differently. Right? That's what bring us, you know, here, you know, on on travel data, and I wanted to bring this up, you know, with the different traveler groups, you know, as they're there. You know, this is mostly thinking about policy establishment. I saw that it's our upcoming webinar where we're gonna go a lot deeper into providing you with the tools, you know, for it. But a good way of, you know, I personally think as a consultant on policy, it is understanding the nature and the type of travelers. Right? Potentially, even a board member may have some other perks, you know, different, you know, than that. An actual, you know, potential frequent traveler likely shared those rights. Right? But, however, you know, as it's more infrequent traveler and so on, your policy can be, you know, totally different as well thinking about the human experience of the traveler. Alright. So the takeaways, you know, truly that I can, you know, give you, it is going to be, you know, simplify it. Right? You know, all this integrated visibility in a dashboard, you know, gives you the power to make it simple as you monitor the actual, you know, contracts of your suppliers and customize it. I mentioned it. Make it your own. Be able to prepare to look at the data in a different way, and then make it engaging. Right? This gives you the power to engage, pick up the phone, go to a property, why aren't you respecting my rate, you know, and things as they happen, and then the insights. You know, all the intelligence even before, you know, you think about going to RFP. You know, you could just have it at a glance. And there's a lot of bang for the buck when you do this for hotels. That is what we see large companies doing. Now I am honored, you know, to bring on stage Tom Gerke. Again, he's a, you know, senior data engineer here, you know, for Inverse Travel. Tom has been in the industry for a while, and, you know, this is the, you know, the spirit of sharing with you how much I learned, you know, when I'm with him one more time. So, you know, Tom, say hello to the audience, and I'll fire off by asking, you know, again, talk to me about the journey. Right? When you did you begin in travel and, you know, you know, have you seen it evolve then? You know, thank you so much for joining me for this one. Well, thanks for thanks for inviting me. I'm Tom Gerke. I've been in the travel industry now for pushing 20 years, almost 20 years, and I spent about 10 years in the financial sector doing analytics prior to that. So I've, I've I've been around and and seen quite a bit as far as the analytics. And, it's it's as you, you know, as you put it, the journey. It's been an interesting journey from the time when people were printing tickets in back offices until now when everything is in the cloud and, you know, the way the way people book evolved from across the old guys who just wanted to call their admin and say, I need to be here and do that versus all of the young travelers that are coming into the workforce now that want to book travel in whatever way is appropriate for them at the moment, which is basically whatever comes to mind at the moment, probably their phone. So it's been an interesting evolution. Wow. And I guess, you know, have you thought about the chat gpt version of, you know, travel? I've seen you demo to me how, you know, potentially prescriptive analytics. Right? The you know, AI taking a look at your data and telling you, hey. Maybe you should do this type alerts. I've seen that, and it's, you know, brilliant. But what other ways do you believe this, you know, techno new technology that it is ramping up right now could potentially disrupt, you know, like, how, you know, I guess, everything in the industry. Have you even thought about it? Sure. I mean, probably the biggest disruptor is the is the supplier direct bookings, the ability for people to book directly with an airline or with a hotel chain in a way that is, different than it was in the past. You know, not only is it more convenient, but the ability to book directly with a supplier with but the supplier still knowing your travel policies and your guidelines in which hotel change or which airlines you wanna buy us, you know, to to which are your preferreds, things like that. But, of course, go along with that goes challenges of doing any sort of analytics. You know, the old the old adage, if you can't see it, you can't manage it certainly applies to travel. So previously, if all of your, if all of your travel spend was going through a managed travel program and they were feeding detailed data into your analytics, you could see it. And there was always the concern about people booking outside of the program. But more and more now, that's it's not necessarily advantageous to the traveler and to the price to book through a managed travel program. People are finding lower fares when they go to book directly. So, you know, coordinating all of that stuff is is a big challenge, and and the AI goes a long way in in making sure that we're capturing all of the data and can still tell still tell the story about where you have spend. For example, you know, a a key part is what's changing. So if you, have a let's say you have a a a contract with an airline that covers a certain route and your analytics are not telling you that you actually have a lot of spend, a lot of volume on a different route that you have included, that's a tremendous thing. But if you don't know that, you're not gonna know to go talk to your carrier and say, hey. We need to talk about Dallas to LA. It's not in our contract. Why not? That that that so I wonder that the whole KPIs in which we've been auditing all these is about to change when with vendor direct. Right? Yes. Yeah. So interesting. So, like, right, I can do this for hours. That's why I wanted to share people, you know, this feeling, you know, you know, with Tom, right, with all of these things, of the great minds that we have in travel here at Imbursed. But, talk to me, you know, like, the models. Right? You know, how, you know, different could be the different KPIs, you know, that you have out there, specifically, you know, mostly in hotels. Right? Thinking about it, what do you believe may change on hotel specific or opportunities? Or potentially, you can even talk to me, the oddest case that you've seen you asked, you know, to engineer behind the scenes that you haven't even you know, thought about before until, like, a corporation is very specific. So maybe if you can share some anecdotes like that. Sure. Well, so, you know, one example so so I'll start with the KPI side, side of it. A very important thing when you're looking at your program is not only am I getting the rates I'm supposed to be getting according to my contract with that hotel chain or that particular property, but how do they compare to the market rates which are fluctuating? You know, if my deal was a flat rate, but then all of a sudden prices drop because of something like COVID driving them down or what we call the Taylor Swift effect, you know, driving them up. You know, how if you don't have a dynamic rate that guarantees you a certain percentage, and you only have a flat rate, that can change. Now as it relates to your your question about weird things, well, sometimes people start booking hotels or booking room nights in hotels that typically haven't been booked a lot in the past, different parts of the world, different foreign countries. That makes it very challenging to get a determination as to what's the fair market rate. You know, what's the actual market rate for for that night, for that length of stay, for that type of room in that hotel on that date booked at that time? But all of those things are what, enable you to have great negotiations with the with the, with the supplier. You know, if you know that you're getting a good percentage or a discount compared to the market, but you know that other companies that are similar to you, your peers, are even getting a better percentage, that's pretty important information. Yeah. That actually, it all makes sense to me. You, you know, with I see that, you know, a little bit of also as a threat, right, in we're talking about the where, right, in the 5 w's as we introduce them. That critical thinking, you know, is changing because the actual medium is changing. Right? In this case, the where, it is what, you know, could bring really odd cases, you know, the the, you know, the way I thought I I saw it. That's why I wanted to, you know, bring back to that how important it is to take a look at the data. That's the other big takeaway, you know, that, you know, we have. Right? It is you can see this totally different veins, you know, all of those, and how you execute accountability comes from the how and the culture of the company. I can ask you a 1,000 more Kinda felt bad for car rentals in the in the poll there. Nobody they they got no love. I was surprised. Are they the 2nd biggest opportunity because air is getting so cheap going direct that air is gonna be, like, you know, even state funded like train? Do you think that the 2nd biggest opportunity there are cars? Well, not not necessarily the 2nd biggest opportunity, but it certainly is a big opportunity, not just with car rental, but also as that relates to other forms of ground of course, Uber and Lyft and things like that, and then also correlating that with whatever agreements you have with the property. So, for example, somebody might say, well, I'm pretty far away from where I need to be. Let me rent a car because Uber would cost a fortune, and then they end up renting a car and paying for parking someplace where parking is expensive, and they didn't even realize that parking free parking was supposed to be included in their contracted rate for that hotel. So they book so they book on their own through, you know, some third party source. They don't get the contracted rate. They don't get the free parking. They rent the car thinking they're doing the right thing. All the while, it actually would have been cheaper for them to just take the expensive Uber ride because it works out better in the long run. When you when you pull all the pieces of the analytics together, you can see that. That's awesome. And thinking about the full t and e vision of the data going back, you know, to Audrey at the beginning in the in the video that we showed you at the beginning, I have a challenge before that average ticket price is such a, like, antiquated terminology, which should be average cost to fly because of the parking, you know, expense that is going to be submitted. You know, how to think about it potentially, the parking, it is 27. They picked up valet every day. And that same super cheap fare that they might have gotten, if you think about the cost of the company, was a lot larger. So when you think about the behaviors and the different programs of the past, those are those. Thank you. Oh, well, that would make sense. Like, sustainability. You know, companies are getting more and more concerned about if I fly this flight versus that flight or stay at this property versus that property, how much greener is it? But, of course, travelers don't necessarily care about that as much as they wanna fly the carrier that they have their points with or or stay at their preferred hotel. So, you know, all of that ties together. That's so cool. I believe we're on top of the hour, you know, and I in I just hope everybody goes to what you feel like can keep going for, you know, over and over. That's the what I wanted to share also by bringing Tom. I am so thankful, Tom, you know, for you having joined us. It's always an honor, sir, you know, to learn from you. And each time we talk, I learn new stuff, and I look forward to keep on collaborating. I would look so also like to thank Lauren for the amazing, you know, preparedness. I hope you like the content, and that you accomplished what you were looking for. Thank you for trusting us with your time. And I just wanted to give Tom just one more chance. Was there any other things you'd like to leave us with today? Not really. I think the, you know, the, I guess, the my my main thing is is what I started with. If you can't see it, you can't manage it. So, you know, figure out figure out how to see what your what your spend is and where it is, and then you can apply all of those w's that, Rodrigo was talking about. That's right. So we will be sending this recording out after the webinar, so it'll come to you in about 24 hours or so. If you have any questions, you can reply to that email, or you can always send them to customer marketing, one word, at imburse.com. We hope to see you next time. Thank you for attending today's webinar. Thanks, everyone. Bye.