Category: Travel Management

Are you still trusting your gut rather than making data-driven decisions? Even in our tech-savvy world, that’s a common conflict. But Christopherson is resolving data doubt for corporate travel managers through our integration with Domo, the leading business intelligence and data visualization software. With our Domo integration, you can see the story your data tells through real-time analytics and act on data insights that benefit your travel program today.

Assessing the Data Conflict

Data is one of your business’s most valuable assets (85% of us believe this), but surveys show that U.S. businesses don’t trust 32% of their data because it’s “dirty.” And this figure is rising. Dirty data—outdated, inconsistent, inaccurate, or inconsistent data—results from many factors.

What contributes to “data grunge?” Many things:

• Merging data from multiple sources
• Human error in data entry and interpretation
• Disparate data processing methods
• Lag time between data generation and reporting activities
• Sharing data from different departments or “data silos” across the workplace

Even simple differences, such as showing dates in different formats (YYYY-MM-DD in accounting but DD-MM-YY in HR) may muddy your data and cost you money. In fact, IBM estimated that dirty data costs the U.S. economy over $3 trillion annually.

Data may also cause inefficiencies just because there’s so much of it. Most companies are engaged in nonstop data accumulation, leaving decision makers drowning in the very figures that should provide management insights. Disparate data sources compound the problem. If managers can’t align data from HR with data from accounting, they can’t see the story their data tells.

As a result, data-related careers are booming. However, many who work with data lack the training to understand or interpret it well enough to use it as a basis for arguments and decisions, making data literacy a problem for many businesses.

And if you can’t visualize or understand your data or you doubt its accuracy, you can’t implement data-driven decision making.

Providing a Domo-integrated Data Solution

This data conflict left Christopherson with a real conundrum. We wanted to provide clients with real-time, aggregated, accessible travel program data in a visual format that turned data users into data experts.

“We were looking for speed to data. A good BI tool allows you to build charts and infographics quickly, with speed to creation much quicker than with Excel spreadsheets.”

Josh Cameron, head of strategic initiatives, Christopherson Business Travel

With an established approach of reviewing technical enhancements through the lens of “buy or build,” we looked for an existing business intelligence (BI) solution that would benefit customers and integrate with our proprietary AirPortal travel management platform.

The BI solution, we knew, had to connect to accounting, finance, marketing, and travel systems, and use real-time data analytics for the visualization and report building that would enable data-driven decision making.

A BI solution would also resolve the aging data issue businesses faced when reviewing static reports broadcast on monthly or weekly basis by providing real-time analytics and empowering data-driven decision making. Real-time analytics eliminate the worry that data will change in the middle of collecting statistics or obtaining a report and provide current, actionable data for data-based decision making.

“With instant reporting I can see what was spent yesterday. I don’t need to wait until my credit card statement or any other report to come out at the end of the month.”

Gordon C., Travel Manager, CHG Healthcare

Data access was also key. If businesses have hands-on, self-service reporting capabilities, it eliminates the lag time between client questions and account manager responses. Instead of reviewing travel programs monthly and annually, with data and travel spend monopolizing the conversation, the relationship between account and travel managers could be more consultative, more about increasing efficiency, setting goals, and aligning policy, and less about reviewing numbers.

Delivering Real-Time Data Analytics

Domo delivered what we were searching for: real-time data analytics in a dashboard that gives clients and internal employees better insights into travel budget spending.

“It’s great for travel managers and account managers. Since everything is already populated there’s no of running reports. We used to run 20–25 reports for account reviews, processing them by hand. Now these same reports can be downloaded into a presentation and we can focus on addressing client questions.”

Adelina Littler, Account Support Manager, Christopherson Business Travel

In addition to essentially quadrupling the data available to businesses at a glance, our Domo partnership provides clients with an all-encompassing BI tool that gathers, aligns, and connects those data while making real-time data analytics visible, beautiful, and easy to use. Visible data, in turn, fosters data-driven decision making.

“In today’s world, you have to bring technology to the front and provide meaningful tools to move business forward. Without it, travel managers will fall behind.” We find clients often avoid analyzing their travel data altogether, never seeing the insights that their program and travelers really need. That was our motivation behind developing a solution that makes travel data easier to understand. “Being able to visualize the story their data tells allows them to take informed action that ultimately helps them run a more cost-effective travel program.”

Mike Cameron, CEO, Christopherson Business Travel

“I am using the data to track the volume of travel per each contract we have, track and assess the impacts of ticket changes related to advance ticketing—which allows me to evaluate our recommendation for advance booking—and track volume of travel per individual.”

Stephanie P., Director of Administration/Facilities/Security, Sigmatech

Converting Travel Data into Travel Insights

Domo’s data cards, which are visual aggregations of data, provide high-level travel program views and the ability to drill down data to a granular level.

With this data visibility, businesses can easily identify and rectify data anomalies. An actual hotel error that resulted in a $59 million nightly charge was easy to pinpoint and correct because it produced a giant spike in a three-year data period.

Domo data summaries also reveal that modifying travel patterns can result in savings. By looking at advanced purchases and ticket exchanges, a travel manager determined that their employees were purchasing nonrefundable tickets too far in advance, resulting in a pattern of rescheduling travel, rebooking travel, and ticket loss. Waiting until travel schedules solidified resulted in cost savings for this client.

Conversely, another travel manager looked at cost percentages for flight bookings and acted on the data by identifying booking procrastinators and altering their pattern of last-minute airfare bookings. Booking further in advance brought this company better rates.

Speaking of travel costs, would you be surprised to discover that your most expensive traveler isn’t your most frequent traveler? By drilling to the granular level of the “top travelers” data card (clicking on a pie chart, clicking on a slice of pie, and clicking on an individual traveler), you can identify your costliest traveler and determine what inflates their expenses.

Maybe it’s an increase in international airfare rates, but perhaps Ryan is booking business-class flights and renting SUVs out of policy. Or Angela has 97 separate bookings for only 30 trips because she’s booking in stages—airfare, then hotel, then rental car—and you’re paying a fee for each booking.

Data visualization and drilling insights empower your conversations with travelers and inform your travel policy. You’ll realize savings when Ryan scales back to policy-approved comfort economy flights and smaller vehicles or your policy is amended to require that Angela book airfare, hotel, and rental car in a single transaction.

“Domo makes it extremely easy to identify problem areas—how many exchanges, and who violates the most often.”

Gordon C., Travel Manager, CHG Healthcare

In addition to providing actionable data, Domo can automate event-triggered notifications. Say you want to keep your travel spend in line with passing calendar time. Domo can provide a “gas gauge” of travel spend, notifying you that you’re over budget year-to-date.

“By continually visualizing their travel spend, travel managers have a lighter load. Instead of downloading and analyzing spreadsheets, they have a good, instant snapshot of how they’re doing on travel spend, which lets managers focus on other things but gets them the same information.”

Taylor Daily, Business Intelligence Analyst

Informing Data-driven Decision Making

Like the travel manager and traveler relationship, Domo’s data visibility changes the dynamic between upper management and travel managers. Since decision makers can access, visualize, and share real-time data, it’s easier to reach a consensus for action.

This evolution was demonstrated by a travel manager who, using visible data in Domo along with Concur Travel and Expense, showed potential savings if her company moved to an online booking tool. Not only could management see more was currently being spent for full-service bookings, they could also see travel spend was leaking outside of negotiated contracts and the Christopherson umbrella. Adding this rogue travel spend to contractual agreements improved the client’s negotiating power to justify lower rates because they used real-time data analytics to inform their decision. That’s data-driven decision making.

Negotiating power can also be drawn from viewing and acting on travel vendor data. Looking at hotel bookings by state and then by chain may reveal that you need to request/require travelers to book with your preferred vendors or you need to negotiate a contract with a vendor in a new area. One client discovered savings by requesting that travelers book a hotel in a different zip code—right across the street from the property where they were staying.

“We can easily see how much we are spending in each category (air, car, hotel) and/or with each vendor. For example, if we need to increase spending with a certain vendor to reach a threshold we can easily see where we are. Also, we can compare costs and see any potential problems. For example, in a specific city we can compare our hotel spend and identify properties that are more expensive and exceed our caps.”

Gordon C., Travel Manager, CHG Healthcare

Christopherson uses Domo not only to assess how your travel program is running but also as an internal resource for our own data challenge—assessing constant feedback on our travel management services.

“Domo is one of the most important things we done in last few years, because analyzing travel spend is core to managing a successful overall travel program.”

Matt Cameron, COO, Christopherson Business Travel

The pandemic yanked travel manager and arranger positions from the office periphery to its center. The effort to bring travelers home before borders closed and lockdowns began demonstrated the need to verify traveler locations, check on their well-being, ensure their safety, fulfill duty of care responsibilities, and manage risk. And addressing this situation required developing new teams consisting of travel managers, HR, upper management, risk management, and other stakeholders.

While returning to travel is an office-specific effort, there are general traveler health and safety program modifications to involve your team in now. You’ll emerge on the other side of the Covid tunnel with a program that emphasizes traveler care and addresses their concerns about resuming travel, making it easier for employees to leave the office—even if they work from home.

1. Review your corporate travel insurance.

For many businesses, the coronavirus pandemic revealed just what was—and was not—covered by their travel insurance. As a result of the pandemic, some insurers quit selling travel insurance altogether and others excluded particular coronavirus claims, according to Forbes.

With business trips averaging $1,293, trip delay and cancellation insurance may be worth investigating, but travel insurance definitely helps fulfill employee duty-of-care responsibilities, as well as protecting your investment in the equipment your travelers take on the road.

Take advantage of travel downtime to review your coverage and ensure it aligns with your corporate needs, HR requirements, and emergent world situations, then stipulate a timeframe to regularly review your insurance coverage and a method of communicating your insurance coverage to your employees, such as in your benefits manual or as part of your traveler training program.

2. Revaluate how your program addresses traveler well-being.

Business travel can be stressful. According to On Call International, more than a third of business travelers said work-related travel increases their stress level—and that was before the pandemic.

“Businesses must consider and prioritize employees’ health, safety, and personal comfort levels as travel resumes,” Mike Koetting, SAP Concur chief product strategy officer told Fortune. “It’s the right thing to do, on top of having duty of care responsibilities to meet.”

As you anticipate sending employees back on the road, consider how being on the road impacts them. Query your employees about their travel concerns and wellness needs and make adjustments in your travel program to safeguard their mental, physical, and social welfare.

“Employees with high wellbeing are more resilient during widespread or personal tough times, are less likely to have unplanned days out of the office and have better performance than those with low wellbeing,” said Ryan Wolf, physical wellbeing lead at Gallup.

More information on how investing in employee well-being benefits your business and ways to create a traveler-friendly policy can be found here.

3. Implement a travel-approval tool.

The coronavirus revealed the need to review many travel program aspects, but none so much as duty of care and risk management. A recent SAP Concur survey showed that “ensuring personal health and safety while traveling is most important to business travelers, with 65% placing it in their top three considerations.”

According to HMHF Travel’s Terri Dembs, “Upper management wants to be involved in the decision as to whether or not trips are essential, and they want to be aware of where their travelers are going. Companies want their travelers to be safe, and they have a legal and moral responsibility to do so.”

Implementing a pre-trip tool, such as Christopherson Business Travel’s Travel Approval, which tracks the approval process digitally, gives managers and travelers the ability to keep tabs on not only approvals but also modifications and cancelations, and even helps enforce travel policy compliance. The Travel Approval dashboard also can be viewed by others in your organization who have access to AirPortal 360.

Has your team determined that some destinations are too high risk for your travelers? Block-listing destinations provides an additional way to approve travel. Our technology team can configure your SAP Concur online booking tool to block countries, cities, regions, and even continents, according to your travel policy.

4. Evaluate your preferred vendors’ health and safety measures and develop a contingency plan.

You’ve established preferred airlines, hotel chains, and rental car companies and even negotiated rates for your travel program, but have you checked on these vendors since the pandemic began to review their health and safety measures?

Some airlines are capping occupancy or blocking middle seats. Hotel chains may let rooms “rest” between occupants or seal doors after cleaning. Many suppliers have apps for contactless check-in and -out and car rental and drop-off. Most vendors require that their employees and customers wear masks in public areas, and cleaning frequency has been increased universally. But protocols differ between vendors, so now is a good time to review your suppliers’ efforts and determine your health and safety comfort level, using travelers as a sounding board if needed.

Christopherson’s Covid-19 Travel Vendor Health & Safety Guide provides an overview of vendor-specific measures so you can determine what is acceptable for your travelers and policy. Review health and safety measures now and revise your vendor preferences accordingly, with an eye on rate negotiations in 2021 or earlier.

Business Travel News’ Michael Baker says that this is also a good time to build supplier relationships, especially for small- and medium-sized enterprises. “Hotels, for example, are not only hurting for business, but also have sales teams that likely are not occupied with large corporate clients, as they would be in a seller’s market. Not only will there be a long-term benefit in building the relationship, but it also will benefit short-term should issues arise as hotels face lower staffing levels and reduced services.”

On the road, your travelers may find discrepancies between a vendor’s intended safety measures and their actual application. It’s wise to do some advanced planning in case travelers don’t feel safe on a particular flight or at a particular property. What if the parking lot is uncomfortably packed when you arrive at the hotel, the employees aren’t adhering to mask mandates, or your room is dirty? Can your traveler opt to stay at an off-channel property or with another preferred vendor but at a higher rate? Deciding how to handle the situation—and communicating this to your travelers beforehand—eliminates some of the wariness of post-pandemic travel.

5. Develop a post-travel return-to-work plan.

With health and safety at the forefront of every travel decision, take this opportunity to consider what your travelers should do when they return from a business trip.

Legal firm Farella Braun & Martel suggests considering whether traveling employees will be allowed to return to the office and interact with coworkers. “The most cautious approach would be for the employee to work from home for two weeks to minimize their risk of infecting anyone else. Employers can also require employees to undergo COVID-19 testing before returning to the workplace so long as the testing is job-related and consistent with business necessity, and any out of pocket costs are reimbursed.”

Implementing a post-travel plan safeguards all employees from the potential spread of Covid-19, as well as other illnesses. Protocols to consider may include:

• following state-mandated post-travel protocols
• taking a mandatory Covid-19 test upon return
• taking a second Covid-19 test 5–7 days after return
• working remotely for XX days
• screening health daily for XX days
• filling out a return-to-work questionnaire
• allowing PTO days following a trip
• providing trip feedback including vendor safety

6. Communicate your duty of care policy and technology.

With border closures and quarantine mandates making return trips difficult for business travelers, the pandemic made travel managers, HR departments, and upper management acutely aware of employee duty of care.

But employees are also emphasizing their safety needs. In the SAP Concur survey, 96% of travelers said they “expect their employers to proactively take steps to improve traveler safety and lower the stress associated with travel.”

Before your employees begin traveling, communicate your duty of care approach by:

• educating your travelers on your duty of care policy
• training your travelers on your duty of care technology
  • demonstrate access to real-time Covid-19 information via Airtineraries
  • use SecurityLogic to demonstrate how off-channel booking increases traveler risk
  • update travelers’ alert preferences in AirPortal
  • send a test “Safety Check” to your travelers

We also offer a free risk-management kit to help you assess your program’s safety measures.

7. Develop a pre-travel checklist.

Developing and completing an employee pre-travel checklist helps ensure that your employees are trip-ready while contributing to your duty of care obligation. While your checklist should follow your specific corporate policy, standard items to consider include:

• traveler’s name and vital information as it appears on official identification
• photocopies of traveler’s current travel IDs (visa, passport, REAL ID)
• travelers current emergency contact and backup contact information (name, phone number, email address)
• trip-specific insurance information
• verification of vaccinations required per destination
• confirmation of employee’s safety/duty of care training, including emergency communication protocols
• confirmation of hygiene kit distribution (hand sanitizer, sanitizing wipes, masks, etc.)
• verification that employee’s AirPortal Traveler Profile is current/complete
• confirmation that traveler downloaded necessary apps and received training on their use
• verification of traveler’s completed health evaluation/testing as required per destination
• shared pertinent information regarding any extended personal travel at the destination

Preparing now for the return of business travel ensures we stay safe out there!

Disclaimer: Business travel needs vary from corporation to corporation. This blog does not provide specific travel-restriction advice, and the information provided is not exhaustive. Changes in vendors are company-specific managerial decisions, not a result of Christopherson Business Travel publications.

On our blog, we often talk about the benefits of a managed travel program for corporations.  But what about the traveler?  Whether traveling every single week or only once a year, a company’s managed travel program should assist travelers as well.
Traveling itself is taxing. And that’s not even counting in the stress from meetings, staying on top of emails and time management. We support companies, but more importantly their employees, with the eccentricities of travel. Christopherson provides  a wealth of essential resources, just for travelers.

How Christopherson assists travelers:

• One-stop Shopping. Book your air, hotel and car from one source.  All discounts and negotiated rates are at your fingertips.
• Guaranteed Lowest Fare. The traveler will receive a refund if a lower fare is found that meets the same qualifications as the original fare.
• After–hours. Christopherson is available 24/7  You will receive experienced, efficient, and courteous support round the clock, no matter where they are in the world.
• Unused Ticket Tracking. Unused tickets are tracked and made available to you immediately upon cancellation of the original ticket.
• Traveler Profile. Avoid wasted time and hassle of having to communicate or re-entering your unique travel preferences every time you book your travel.

You have enough on your plate. We cover the tiny details of travel so you can focus on the more important items.

Read next:

• How the REAL ID Act will soon effect travelers
• Travel hardest on small business travelers
• How business travelers can get airport lounge access

Christopherson Business Travel is an award-winning travel management company with more that 60 years of experience.  From our custom-built technology to our experts employees, we’ve succeeded by providing superior support for all the unique problems travel hands out. If you think your company could benefit from additional travel management solutions, contact us today.