intersection: travel management & information technology 1

The technology innovations of the past 15 years have brought widescale changes to the practice and management of corporate travel. Today’s managed travel program is grounded in technol-ogy that enables everything from booking an air ticket to analyzing the data that demonstrates compliance and facilitates strategic negotiations.

Given this environment, enlisting the knowl-edge of internal technology experts can be critical to making the right decisions for a travel program, especially when it comes to sourcing new tools, ensuring system compatibility and driving data management and integration. As the relationship between IT and travel management develops, deepter opportunities for innovation also emerge.

For the moment, however, a minority of travel managers are leveraging IT know-how. An April 2012 BTN Group/Amadeus survey of 223 travel buyers showed that just one-third of surveyed re-spondents felt they had sufficient influence with their information technology (IT) departments to support change management and innovation for the travel program. In this paper, The BTN Group and Amadeus explore this emerging rela-tionship and how travel managers can begin to le-verage IT relationships to improve their programs.

knowledge is powerClearly travel managers with a tech background or deep understanding of technology will fare bet-

ter in today’s tech-based environment. Such travel managers, however, remain a rare breed. Accord-ing to a BTN Group/Amadeus survey of 214 trav-el buyers in September and October 2012, only 7 percent rated themselves “excellent” in their cur-rent knowledge of IT requirements as they relate to travel technologies. Nearly one-third (29 per-cent) said they have a “good” knowledge of IT re-quirements. The largest group (44 percent), how-ever, rated their knowledge level as ”basic” and a significant 20 percent rated it as “poor.”

While some travel managers remain content to leave their technology needs entirely in the hands of their TMC, forward-thinking travel managers are looking to their own IT depart-ments to shore up the knowledge they them-selves might currently be lacking. Well over half (59 percent) of the travel buyers surveyed this fall said their need to collaborate with their compa-ny’s IT team has increased in the past year.

setting expectationsThe collaborations are taking place in several key areas. Best practice is evolving towards travel management involving IT at the begin-ning of any tech-based project, whether it’s a matter of sourcing new apps for mobile tools or as potentially complex as choosing a new online booking tool that will integrate with other cor-porate systems.

PRODUCED BY

Elizabeth West Group Director, Content Solutions ewest@thebtngroup.com

Irene Korn, Executive Editor Content Solutions ikorn@thebtngroup.com

Mariza Moreira Graphic Design Leadmmoreira@ntmllc.com

Louis Magliaro, Publisher lmagliaro@thebtngroup.com

Tim Reid, Vice Presidenttreid@thebtngroup.com

SPOnSORED BY

INTerSeCTION travel management & information technologyProgressive travel managers are taking tech-related issues to information technology departments to garner critical input for decision-making and implementation.

2 intersection: travel management & information technology

The reasons are multifold, and start with the most basic of questions: What is the best way to achieve the business goal?

Historically, IT has been called in after the fact—after a new travel technology has already been sourced—to make the new applications work as best they can with already existing sys-tems. In the past few years, however, it has become increasingly apparent that there are benefits to in-volving IT at the beginning of the process, when their insights can benefit the outcome, as opposed to later, when they’ve often been charged with in-tegrating technologies that were not a good fit.

To that end, travel managers can benefit from bringing the problem to IT first, rather than a solution they’ve already decided on. Steven Mandelbaum, VP of information sys-tems for The Advisory Board Company, is in the somewhat unusual position of having both information technology and travel within his domain. During the webinar, he pointed out that technology people are inherently problem solvers. “They want to develop a solution to a problem,” he said, noting that travel managers who ask for help with a challenge will get more attention than those who simply present a tech-nology option and ask for implementation.

Together, travel management and IT can de-cide if the solution will be best addressed by de-velopment in-house or purchasing technology

from a TMC or third party. With engagement at that level, IT will also

be able to contribute to the rFP process if the decision is to source new technology. Travel managers can expect IT to be able to add in-sights into the questions to ask, details to pro-vide and reasonable pricing expectations. IT can also be a source for working out points in a service level agreements (SLA) that will dictate the details of how a contract is executed.

Just as importantly, IT will have knowledge of how any new system will or will not work with existing systems. Brian Beard, executive technol-ogy consultant for Amadeus, noted that tech-nology discussions between TMCs and travel managers tend to be more superficial when IT is not involved, potentially giving the TMC an unequal say in the best technology to imple-ment. “There are issues that can come up when a TMC or agency decides on a technology that is completely different from the in-house systems,” he said. “There might be compatibility issues or issues just passing data back and forth.”

Any new technology should integrate with existing technology, and in the best of cases, not just with existing travel platforms but with other companywide erP systems. With the rise of open platforms, such an integration might be relatively seamless, but legacy corporate sys-tems might require considerable manipulation on the back end to achieve that integration. Such integrations affect performance for the end user, as well as the ability to transfer data.

practical applicationsThe quest for more and better data is ongoing. Certainly it is travel management that best un-derstands what data is required to support travel-related business decisions, but it is IT that has the knowledge of how—and even if—any new technology can be implemented to share data with existing systems.

A daily automated interaction with Hr, for example, can help ensure that the travel depart-ment is up to date with emergency contact and other employee information. Additional com-mon data management policies allow travel, business units and senior management to assess the utility of travel and the effect of travel on sales, revenues, distribution, growth and other

learning CURVEHow would you rate your current knowledge of IT requirements as they relate to travel technologies, on a scale of 1 (poor) to 4 (excellent)?

increased COLLaBORaTIOnIn the past 12 months, your need to collaborate with your company’s information technology team has…

Basic

Good

Poor

Excellent

Increased Same Decreased

Source: BTN Group/Amadeus webinar registration survey of 214 travel buyers, Sept-Oct 2012

“Engage with IT early: Get to them in the early stages so they can under-stand the problem

because back-tracking is tough.”

Steven Mandelbaum, The Advisory Board Company

THe INTerSeCTION BeTWeeN travel management and information technology

44%

29%

20%

7%

39%

2%

59%

Source: BTN Group/Amadeus webinar registration survey of 214 travel buyers, Sept-Oct 2012

intersection: travel management & information technology 3

metrics. Collaboration between travel and IT can produce customized data reports and dash-boards that reflect key performance indicators (KPIs) that are important for any specific op-eration or business unit, not just the standard travel KPIs that any company might track.

The BTN Group/Amadeus poll showed that travel buyers recognize data integration as a key issue, but the actual opportunities for integra-tion may be easier to see from the IT side than from the travel perspective.

Calendar Integration — Mandelbaum sees the calendar as the first candidate for organization-wide integration, and while it may seem an obvi-ous step, how many companies provide this inte-gration for their travelers? Business travelers live by the calendar when they are on the road. The calen-dar is their link to the office, to home, to their next flight, to their next appointment, to their next stint in the office and their next trip. The calendar is the sole common point of contact for traveler, the traveler’s manager and direct reports, human resources, corporate security, travel management, clients or prospects, as well as the traveler’s fam-ily. Integrating the calendar offers tremendous op-portunities to analyze travel against sales, renewal rates, productivity and other metrics. Mobile Travel Technology — Nowhere is the intersection between travel management and IT more striking than in the mobile space. An overwhelming majority of business travel-ers carry, use and rely on mobile devices. But the business travel world has been relatively slow to adopt mobile innovations that have be-come commonplace in the leisure travel world. Travelers can pick and choose from thousands of travel apps for iPhone, Blackberry, Android and Windows devices, but travel managers have only recently begun coming to grips with the proliferation of mobile apps that can—and do—lure travelers away from managed chan-nels for booking, buying and reporting travel.

In contrast, IT has been dealing with mobile for years, consolidating email and application access while maintaining security, maintaining a single corporate technology platform or ensuring compatibility between multiple platforms and customizing data analytics to meet specific busi-

ness needs. Internal IT support—perhaps instead of, or in addition to, a TMC partner—is a natu-ral partner for travel managers who are looking to implement mobile solutions for their travelers.

For example, mobile travel strategies that are managed exclusively by agencies or TMCs can create security blind spots. IT cannot protect processes and programs with which it is not in-timately familiar. Mobile travel technology that is not coordinated with IT may lead to a prolif-eration of systems, platforms and data streams that are neither compatible nor interoperable. Companies can spend thousands of hours try-ing to reformat and consolidate data that could have been compiled and warehoused in com-patible formats had IT been part of the solution and implementation process.

Social Media and Travel — Similar op-portunities exist in the area of social media plat-forms, most notably when it comes to integrating the social efforts of the travel department with other corporate-wide systems. Although some companies have created stand-alone social sites for travel-related questions and conversation, an-ecdotally such sites are not receiving much traf-fic or attention from corporate travelers, as they compete not only with a corporation’s overall so-cial media site, but with the wide range of exist-ing social sites dedicated to travel. A better solu-tion is to incorporate travel’s needs, requirements and conversations into a corporate-wide social site, a collaboration that requires IT’s technology expertise to manifest travel management’s goals.

Collaboration with IT can bring similar ad-vantages in the area of employee tracking and duty of care, data privacy, change management,

In which of the following areas, do you primarily need to work with IT or believe you will soon need to work with your internal IT department to improve your travel program?

areas of COLLaBORaTIOn

Source: BTN Group/Amadeus webinar registration survey of 214 travel buyers, Sept-Oct 2012

“Strong IT and travel manage-ment alignment is the way to go. IT gives the travel manager a much richer understand-ing of tools to help drive policy.”Brian Beard, Amadeus

Tech integration

Mobile/social tech

Data reporting

Procuring new tech

Other

19%

14%

8%

33%

26%

4 intersection: travel management & information technology

Project goals:

• Create efficiencies by automating manual processes

• Greater control of traveler data• Costs savings from elimination of

third-party custom reporting

as TMCs and third-party suppliers continue to improve their own technology applica-tions and integrations, the range of off-the-shelf products for travel data management has also grown. While such systems might meet the requirements for most compa-nies, others seek to create their own sys-tems for specific data management needs. That was the case for Karoline Mayr, direc-tor of global travel procurement for Deltek, a leading provider of enterprise software and information solutions for professional services firms and government contractors.

In the process of deciding on a new on-line booking tool, Mayr took the opportu-nity to address challenges she has had in years past in acquiring the data reporting she wanted from her TMC partners. “One of the challenges we’ve had for years is around data, getting the data and the reports we wanted,” she said. “It always involved a large effort to get the data, and then once we built custom reports or

tools, it was inevitably a moving target and we had to create more... We were con-stantly reaching out to third-party suppli-ers [to get the desired data and reports].”

Working together with IT, they created a system by which the feeds from two TMCs go directly into a platform that allows her (and other stakeholders) to receive daily data, manage that data and create stan-dardized reporting and custom reporting on an ad hoc basis.

Preparation included analysis of the ex-isting manual processes, comparing it to the purpose and benefits of automation, determination of the scope of the neces-sary work, review of the cost of creating the system vs. the savings realized by eliminat-ing the purchase of custom reporting from others, and the creation of project manage-ment teams that included representation from travel management, IT and the TMCs.

The end result is a system in which she can create automated custom reporting dashboards for data as well as KPIs. “Ex-ecutives can click on them any time and get aggregate views or particulars,” she said. “It allows us to control our data and not have to go back and forth with a third party. The data is at our fingertips…giving us greater busi-ness intelligence with greater speed.”

about the sPonsor

amadeus is a leading transaction processor and provider of advanced technology solutions for the global

travel and tourism industry. We have a strong commitment to the north

american market, which we support from our regional headquarters and state-of-the-art executive briefing

center in miami and offices in chicago, toronto, Boston,

and tucson. For more details, visit Amadeus at www.amadeus.com/businesstravelit

or email salesinquiries@amadeus.com.

THe INTerSeCTION BeTWeeN travel management and information technology

“Investing resources inside the organization [by working with IT] instead of outside—in the short

term, it’s more work, but it will save money in the long term. You can control and customize and change and modify as you move forward

vs. having to go back to an outside party.”Karoline Mayr, Deltek

workforce disruptions and system performance associated with application implementations, negotiations with agencies and suppliers, budget forecasts, planning and other key organizational activities. A strong alignment between travel and IT can lead to better, more informed travel tech-nology decisions and implementations.

In addition to a change in the mindset of both travel management and IT when it comes to col-laboration, a shift is necessary in the perception of the costs associated with travel technology. “Most organizations don’t invest as much as they can in travel technology,” said Mandelbaum. “It is seen as a cost and expense, but I think it of as an invest-ment—and [corporations] will get more return if they invest more.”

The business case is clear: Collaboration be-tween travel management and IT leads to richer, more accessible data and the opportunities to use that data to make more intelligent business deci-sions. More integrated data allows for benchmark-ing, both within and outside of the organization, along with analysis of key factors such as how trav-el affects sales and profits—in other words, that elusive rOI of travel. The ability to match travel data with operational data allows travel to move that much closer to the business process.

collaboration case study: customized data