{"id":43559,"date":"2015-12-15T11:54:28","date_gmt":"2015-12-15T10:54:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.voyages-d-affaires.com\/reporting-leternelle-course-a-la-data-3-20151215.html"},"modified":"2016-02-10T13:13:12","modified_gmt":"2016-02-10T12:13:12","slug":"reporting-the-race-to-data-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.voyages-d-affaires.com\/en\/reporting-the-race-to-data-3","title":{"rendered":"Reporting - The eternal race for data"},"content":{"rendered":"

A joke about big data is circulating on social networks and in the aisles of trade fairs: \"It's like sex at school: everyone talks about it, no one really knows how to do it, everyone thinks everyone else is doing it, so everyone brags about doing it.<\/em>\". It has the merit of illustrating the gulf which, in many companies, separates rhetoric from day-to-day reality. Data has indeed acquired a crucial status, particularly in the business travel sector, where information relating to air ticket reservations, hotel extras, mileage reimbursements and so on all cross and intertwine. All this data becomes expenditure, if only because of the cost of processing it.<\/p>\n

Controlling data therefore means controlling expenditure. However, it is hard to imagine anyone today who can claim to have complete visibility and control over this information. A Forrester study published last year pointed out that travel and entertainment expenses are the second most difficult item for companies to control. So it's no coincidence that last September, Avexia and Concomitance chose to call their new white paper \"Travel & Expenses\".In search of lost expenditure<\/em>\"with an eloquent subtitle: \"30 % to 40 % of them are not managed<\/em>\". The report focuses on the situation of SMEs, but the traceability of data poses problems even for the major Cac 40 companies.<\/p>\n

\"Zadorozhnyi<\/p>\n

However, the collection and analysis of these data streams is essential if travel policies are to be based on reliable foundations. \"The challenge is to ensure that the travel policy has been properly defined, and that it can evolve as needs change<\/em>says Emmanuel Verg\u00e9, Marketing Director of Concur France. The aim is to improve policy management by identifying changes in passenger purchasing behaviour more quickly.<\/em>\"Another important issue is negotiation. \"If you want to be in a position to buy well, you need reliable information<\/em>\"adds Emmanuel Verg\u00e9.<\/p>\n

The development of the travel industry is not making things any easier. Quite the contrary: the mass of information is constantly growing and passing through more and more channels. The arrival of new players such as Airbnb and Uber has only added new data that needs to be managed. At the same time, traditional suppliers are looking more and more openly at direct distribution, snubbing the intermediaries who used to centralise booking information on behalf of the company. This is currently the case with Lufthansa and its tax imposed on bookings via a GDS. It will probably be the same tomorrow for other airlines or hotel groups.<\/p>\n

The canals are overflowing<\/h2>\n

\"The number of spending channels is exploding and I think that capturing 100 % of data is an illusion.<\/em>agrees Emmanuel Verg\u00e9. The important thing may not be to capture all of it, but to have an intelligent tool capable of making forecasts and identifying trends.<\/em>\"Could the race for data be lost in advance? In any case, suppliers are investing in new technologies while forging partnerships to provide their customers with strategic information. It is then up to the company to identify the right partner for its needs.<\/p>\n

Here too, the market is complex. \"The fields of intervention of the various players are increasingly overlapping,<\/em> stresses Yann Barbizet, founder of the consulting firm Concomitance. Companies are sometimes confused, between suppliers who do not offer a booking solution, those who only manage payment, or those who only handle part of the payment or reconciliation process.<\/em>\". And to conclude: \"The one who holds the key is the one who controls payment<\/em>\". In fact, the diversity of payment solutions - including corporate cards, prepaid cards, virtual cards and prepaid cards such as the one recently launched by BNP Paribas - enables companies to capture all data flows. Directly integrated into travel agencies' booking tools, the AirPlus-BNP Paribas card or the American Express Business Travel Account guarantee that payments are properly fed back into management tools. What's more, after the airlines, this solution is now being accepted by a growing number of players, including car rental companies and hotel reservation centres, while new market entrants such as Airbnb are also on the horizon.<\/p>\n

This more detailed level 3 data provides greater visibility of certain expenses, such as ancillary costs, which are on the increase in the air transport sector. The aim is to prepare for negotiations with greater precision. \"The company needs to have a good overview of all its expenditure, as there is often a discrepancy between the data available to the customer and that held by the airline's sales staff.<\/em>warns Philippe Klopman, SME Sales Manager at AirPlus. That's what smart data is all about: getting information from the source to provide data that is 100% closer to reality.<\/em>.\" The AirPlus Information Manager supplier data consolidation tool is part of this approach.<\/p>\n

Expense management solutions, such as those from KDS or Concur, take a different approach. \"We tend to think that the truth is in the expense claim,<\/em> advocates Emmanuel Verg\u00e9, Marketing Director of Concur France. A number of things happen between the booking and what is actually paid out to the employee. The challenge lies in reconciliation: automatically reconciling a booking with a payment, trying to understand the discrepancies, and putting in place a battery of checks to automatically detect fraud or other types of problem.<\/em>\". Through its TripLink tool, Concur enables companies to regain control over \"invisible expenditure\", by automatically capturing data on bookings made outside the company's usual channels. This mastery of open booking is also reflected in the tool's openness to new market players such as Airbnb and Uber, and more recently Captain Train.<\/p>\n

\"david<\/p>\n

Travel agencies are also taking up the issue, and above all investing in new reporting solutions to improve quality. This is particularly true of BCD Travel with its DecisionSource tool, which aims to provide travel managers with a complete overview of the travel programme via a dashboard that consolidates traveller profiles and expense tracking. BCD is also relying on its consulting arm, Advito, to provide in-depth, 'smart data' analysis. At the end of 2015, Carlson Wagonlit Travel (CWT) completed the global roll-out of CWT AnalytIQs, which organises the transition from static reporting to a dynamic analysis tool. The solution, developed with a panel of travel managers, adds information on expense reports, credit card data, unused tickets and off-channel bookings to the data traditionally provided by an agency. \"Our aim is to take our customers from a world of facts, figures and reports to a world of connections, perspectives and possibilities.<\/em>\"says Doug Anderson, CEO of CWT.not only to change the way CWT provides travel data, but also to steer us towards major changes<\/em>\".<\/p>\n

While the diversity of the players involved in this reporting issue can make a company's head spin, the bridges between solutions are helping to create an increasingly coherent ecosystem. This is particularly the case at HRS. In October, the hotel reservation platform unveiled a strategic partnership with expense management specialist Dimo Software, while also accepting the American Express vPayment virtual card in addition to the AirPlus AIDA solution. \"All the solutions fit together gradually<\/em>says Emmanuel Ebray, Director of HRS France. A year and a half ago, we also overhauled our reporting system to make it more relevant and to show the savings made more clearly. We are no longer in the era of indigestible Excel spreadsheets. We need to give intelligence to our tools, by putting them into strategic perspective.<\/em>\".<\/p>\n

Everyone has their own method for getting to grips with this vast and varied data, extracting the most relevant information from it, and taking the decisions that need to be taken. But the ambition remains the same for all: \"to move from a posteriori control to a priori control\", as Yann Barbizet at Concomitance sums it up. An observation shared by Emmanuel Verg\u00e9 at Concur: \"Big data is all well and good, but we're now in the age of prediction. If we can project scenarios based on this huge volume of data, we've got a winner.<\/em>\". This will be the next stage in the race for data, which could well change the face of travel management in the years to come.<\/p>\n