The future of travel management is all about integrated data processing

Companies are faced with a growing diversity of sources of travel information, from travel agencies to payment methods to hotel consolidators. The key to improving their management lies in tools that automate and integrate data, which are increasingly being implemented, according to the conclusions of the conference on digitization held in Madrid and Barcelona by Forum Business Travel.

The entry of new business travel providers, such as cab management platforms, hotel consolidators, visa processing and parking management, is forcing companies to process more data on employee travel. Many of them are opting to implement automated solutions that allow more time to be spent on analysis and decision making.

“It is estimated that without the right tool, travel managers can spend 80% of their time entering and processing data and 20% on interpreting it to improve management and achieve savings. It's about investing these terms and spending as little time as possible on purely mechanical tasks," says Jes s Cristóbal, sales director at Sand / Qlik Luminary.

The reality is that the most widespread system for this function is the Excel sheet that, despite being a very powerful application, cannot respond to the challenges that the so-called Big Data presents to both suppliers and consumers of corporate travel. In this sense, the future lies in the implementation of dashboards. “What is not measured cannot be improved”, reminds Travel Management expert Agustín Casado.

As explained Raquel Vaquero, travel manager at Gestamp, “all data are the same if we do not give them a proper treatment”. The dashboard tools consolidate information from various sources, both internal and external, provide greater visibility to the KPIs (Key Performance Indicators), essential performance indicators for purchasing departments and, of course, facilitate the definition of the strategy in the travel area.

According to Vaquero, the integral treatment of the data "has to involve all the departments of the company that have some relationship with travel". The Gestamp travel manager also recommends "establishing a scale of objectives and periodic follow-up". If these conditions are met, the scorecard can be a very useful tool for negotiating with suppliers.

As a complement to the speakers, the working groups gathered by Forum Business Travel in Madrid and Barcelona, with the participation of more than a hundred travel managers, have analyzed the future of digitization;They emphasized the need for data quality rather than quantity, the standardization of formats to promote integration and employee training.

 

.