THE CONVERSATION
with Susan Hopley of The Data Exchange
The Data Exchange has taken humble data and catapulted it into the online trading space in a bid to recognise its value. Gillian Upton speaks to the company's founder and CEO, Susan Hopley
S
usan Hopley manages the unthinkable – making data sexy! As unlikely a scenario as that is, it is not only laudable but also essential in a business travel industry
that will be increasingly underpinned by the analysis of numbers. Management information (MI) is pivotal to the
success of any managed travel programme and no TMC pitch is complete without a basic layer of data from which to deduce travel patterns, travel booking behaviour, average price paid on top city pairs, and so on, in order to improve buying clout around a negotiating table. It is an essential tool in the arsenal that travel managers have to manage a travel programme. Susan Hopley communicates all of this with… biscuits! At a recent industry event she captivated an audience in an otherwise post-lunch graveyard shift with humour, colourful examples, theatricality and edible rewards for those in the audience who could keep up with her high-speed banter about the revolution in data that’s just around the corner. Powerful data analytics,
advanced graphical reporting, strategies for Big Data, and much more filled her presentation, and you could hear a pin drop. Her enthusiasm for her subject is infectious. Nuggets included: “business travel as usual will
appropriate income from it,” she says. “It should be a revenue stream but it’s not at the moment. The issue is comparable to copyright laws and we need the equivalent on data. If a company is going to use my data it should go through The Data Exchange and we’ll agree a price for it. “Airlines say ‘we own the data’, credit card
companies say ‘we own the data’; TMCs say ‘we own the data’; IATA says ‘we own the data’. All segments of the buying chain own the data or components of it. It’s radical but logical to agree a price for various components. We enable buyers and sellers to trade pieces of information useful to them. It is a service to monetise Big Data and make it useable. There is plenty for all.” A growing number of TMCs, hotel suppliers, fund settlement programmes – such as ARC - expense- reporting companies and loyalty programmes are using The Data Exchange. At the root of the business,
“Buyers don't know which reports to ask for – let alone what to do with them – and TMCs only benchmark against their own clients”
not hold”, “we can’t survive on pie charts” and “data is the soil of good business”. She also says that "travel data is among the richest in the world” and that “buyers need to step up their game”. What's more, “Salaries will double as the
PROFILE
Susan Hopley is currently leading the development of the Data Exchange, enabling the monetisation of data through real-time trading. She is founder and CEO of this online data trading platform focusing on the demands of the travel industry. She is the founder of International Software Products (1993), sold on to TRX in 1999 as part of an amalgamation of three companies. Winner of many industry awards, including Top 25 Most Influential and Top 25 Technical Leaders, Hopley has served on the board of ACTE and as the chair of its Research Foundation. She is a frequent speaker at venues around the world and regarded as one of the foremost travel data experts in the world.
contribution to the company will be greater but the skills gap will be huge as 140,000 to 190,000 analytically-talented people will be needed”. She comes at the subject with not just unparalleled
presentation skills but many years of practice and today heads up The Data Exchange, a new type of brokerage company – she calls it a data dating agency – which aims to “monetise” the value of data by real-time trading for the entities producing it. Like a stock or commodity exchange, it allows companies to gain access to new data in next- generation systems and generate revenue for existing data that a company retains. The Data Exchange takes a commission on that trade. It also attempts to deal with the vexed issue of
who owns the data, highlighted by the recent case with PAXIS. “The crusader in me says that the ‘owner’ should control that data and have an
however, is a “catastrophically low knowledge of data understanding” by buyers, says Hopley – who don’t know which reports to ask for, let alone what to do with them – and TMCs, who are only benchmarking against their own clients. Such was the paucity of
knowledge that she had to adjust her business model.
“I thought they’d have people who would know how to get the data but they haven’t. They haven’t even cracked open the door,” she explains. “Some understand it in seconds and others say it’s dangerous. One travel manager said to me: ‘I get my reports, I know who’s been nice and who’s been naughty and I feel in control and comfortable.’ “But after my presentation, he realised that he
could have better control in far more productive ways. But he was still cautious as he had to give up his Rusk biscuits and go for an unknown biscuit.” She is surprised at buyers’ shyness over admitting
their lack of knowledge. “We thought corporates would know what they wanted,” she says, “but because they didn’t we set up a data dating service matching those seeking data with those who have the data they want and need.” At first glance she is an unlikely data guru. Described variously as “a visionary ahead of her time” by AT Kearney’s senior director, global procurement corporate travel, Margaret Brady, and placed in the same space as the NY Stock Exchange by Gartner’s Research VP Doug Laney in a recent webinar, she came to data from the left field.
26 THE BUSINESS TRAVEL MAGAZINE
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