MARCH/APRIL 2013
KPIs
PERFORMANCE SHOW
THEY SAY THAT A PICTURE is worth a thousand words. This truism actually has some scientific veracity – research by 3M, the company behind Post-it notes, found that people comprehend images 60,000 times faster than text. This is perhaps why travel
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management dashboards have become so popular. These visual representations of key performance indicators (KPIs) – such as average spend per transaction, average advance booking time and supplier market share – are becoming the principal way that many companies manage their travel programmes. Travel buyers know that dials, sliders and infographics can tell them the health, or otherwise, of their programme at a glance. Julian Munsey is head of strategic business development at Hillgate Travel, which provides portals to its corporate clients. He says: “Dashboards have become important because people want the information at their fingertips. Gone are the days when you can send over a monthly reporting package. Senior management want numbers and they need them quickly. You can’t say to them that they have to wait until next month to get them.” Munsey says dashboards have been used most widely “in any industry where it is a requirement to be able to track against job number or cost centres” – notably in financial services and the services sector in general, partly because of the cost- centre requirements in those areas. Back in 2005, French technology provider Traveldoo was one of the first to introduce dashboards. Julian
KPI dashboards are vital tools for optimising travel programmes – but many in the industry say it’s time to take them to the next level. Mark Frary reports
Mills, UK director at Traveldoo, says: “We introduced travel management dashboards in 2005 featuring gauges to measure the achievement of policy compliance, online adoption rate and corporate fare usage objectives. It also included key indicators measuring booking volumes by type of service [air, rail, hotel nights and car rental days], top-five city pairs and top-five hotel destinations.” ATPI has just launched a new dashboard reporting tool, which includes live feeds such as airport disruption and weather reports, as well as management information on spend, suppliers, lost savings, advance booking patterns, flexible ticket use and traveller tracking. The dashboard can be customised so that it has the look and feel of the client’s own website. Adam Knights, ATPI’s group sales and marketing director, says: “The look and layout of the new dashboard is totally customisable to the user’s preference with a single sign-on so it can be easily tailored to match the branding of businesses, and the tools can be selected to meet the needs of each user. Development of ATPI’s dashboard is ongoing. Knights says: “A new tool that we will be adding to our dashboard in the near future is Discovery Lite. This application is a
Visual representations of KPIs are becoming the principal way that many companies manage travel programmes
web-based interface focused on invoicing data, which allows clients and travellers to keep track of their business travel spend quickly and efficiently. Our overall aim is to continue developing a robust and secure system for data exchange which follows our clients’ established protocols.”
CUSTOMISATION So you have your dashboard – what should go on it? Most are customisable and can show a range of indicators. The UBS case study (see p58) shows some of those that are in use in practice. Adam Knights at ATPI says KPIs
have remained broadly consistent over the years. “Measuring service, performance and savings is always the priority but, as new tools become available, items like online adoption become part of the KPIs,” he says. “There is always the question of whether TMCs [travel management companies] can affect the rate of online adoption, but with
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