In today’s data-driven world, the effective use of analytics and data has become crucial for businesses of all sizes. Small and medium enterprise (SME) travel programs are no exception. Leveraging analytics and data can provide SMEs with valuable insights, cost savings, and improved decision-making. Depending on how long your company has been in business, data may not always be easy to obtain, but as travel managers in the SME space start to build out their data strategies (remember Phat Data?), there are few great starting points.
History Lessons
One of the first areas to dive into is to analyze the company’s historical travel data. By examining past travel patterns, SMEs can gain a comprehensive understanding of their employees’ travel behavior, preferred airlines, hotels and destinations. This analysis can help identify trends, highlight areas of overspending, and uncover opportunities for negotiation with travel suppliers. This information allows travel buyers to make data-driven decisions to enhance their travel programs, such as determining the right policy parameters, obtaining or renegotiating supplier contracts, developing the right service model and enhancing the traveler experience. If you are in a fairly young organization or are struggling to obtain past historical data, just start collecting it now and begin using it to develop your data strategy.
While the historical data can influence many areas of your managed travel program, expense and budget data is also vital to track and analyze. It will assist organizations in ensuring cost control and budget adherence. More than likely, the travel buyer is not in charge of the budget, but understanding and contributing to the budget process for travel is an important part of your data strategy. By using expense management systems and analytics tools, buyers can gain real-time visibility into travel expenses to identify potential cost-saving measures and policy opportunities. This analysis can determine spend patterns, identifying non-compliant bookings, and detect potential expense fraud. Armed with these insights, buyers can design or tweak policies and build guardrails to reduce unnecessary expenses, negotiate better rates with vendors, and work closely with finance to establish effective travel budgets.
Pearls of Policy Wisdom
Travel buyers who are managing SME programs know that ensuring policy compliance is critical to maintaining program control and maximize cost savings. Policy is the foundation of any managed travel program, so using data and analytics to monitor policy adherence should be at the forefront of the travel buyer’s agenda. At least in the beginning, if you are building your data strategy out properly, you will be looking at policy on a continuing basis. But first you need to create a baseline. By analyzing booking data, SME buyers can identify instances where employees have deviated from policy, such as booking outside the program, not utilizing preferred suppliers or exceeding travel spend limits. Buyers can take action on this data in multiple ways; implementing corrective measures, providing training, or taking a deeper dive to determine if the policy is designed properly in the first place. Overall, the policy should be designed to control costs, enhance program efficiency, and ensure traveler safety.
Data and analytics can empower travel buyers to objectively evaluate supplier performance. By analyzing supplier data, pre-determined service level agreements, KPI’s, service quality, and pricing, buyers can identify the most reliable and cost-effective partners. This information can be used during supplier negotiations to secure better contracts, discounted rates and enhanced services. Development of a preferred supplier program that is data-driven allows travel buyers to optimize their travel program and build long-term partnerships with their preferred suppliers.
Risk & Reward
Travel/People risk management is a paramount concern for any managed travel program. Ensuring the safety and well-being of employees during business travel is critical. Data and analytics can assist buyers in identifying and mitigating travel related risk. Using third-party tools that aggregate real-time travel data, such as high-risk destinations, political unrest, or health advisories, allows organizations to proactively assess potential risks and take preventive measures. This information enables travel buyers to make informed decisions regarding travel approvals, itinerary changes and emergency protocols, ensuring the safety of their employees and minimizing travel disruptions. Buyers should utilize the data that is available to them to collaborate with internal stakeholders on the topic of travel/people risk management. In the SME space there are many organizations that do not have structured risk mitigation programs. If your company is one of them, as the travel buyer, you can help influence and develop a working travel risk management strategy.
As we have explored many areas that data and analytics can support the managed travel program, we know that employee satisfaction and productivity will drive the success of a corporate travel program. Analytics can help buyers gauge employee sentiment and tailor the program to their needs. By analyzing traveler feedback, survey data and booking patterns, SMEs can identify pain points, areas for improvement and preferred travel amenities. This data-driven approach allows travel buyers better ways to connect with travelers, showing new ways to develop the travelers experience, optimize travel policies and drive program compliance. Focusing on the traveler as well as other key stakeholders during the development of your data strategy will ensure that your travel program is regarded as strategic part of your company’s success.
Travel buyers who manage SME programs understand they need to leverage data and analytics to optimize their travel programs. By analyzing historical travel data, monitoring expenses, ensuring policy compliance, evaluating supplier performance, managing travel/people risk, and focusing on employee satisfaction and experience, buyers will be highly successful in achieving the four goals of any managed travel program: Safety, Service, Savings, and Experience. Investing the time to build your data strategy properly is time well spent.
Jennifer Steinke is Director, Travel, Meetings and Fleet at Moderna, and an industry thought leader with over 30 years experience managing corporate travel. She holds an MBA plus Certified Corporate Travel Executive (CCTE) and Global Travel Professional (GTP) certifications from GBTA. Jennifer strives to deliver innovative and thought provoking ideas to the corporate travel industry.
