Management information
➔ information about policy compliance is a different matter. Post-trip data can
highlight missed savings and exception reports show those that travelled out of policy. If you ask for pre-trip data, however, out-of-policy bookings can be flagged before the trip takes place and can be used to prevent such behaviour.
Most management information is obtained from travel management companies and usually details what has been booked rather than actual travel. However, spend data which reports actual trips and costs is also obtainable. And although most data is from the travel management company, it is not at all unusual to make use of different data sources. Supplier data can be used in conjunction with travel management data to confirm the accuracy of the numbers. Moreover, some companies make use of different booking channels for different categories. A company could very well use a hotel booking agency for its transient accommodation and a rail specialist such as
thetrainline.com for its rail bookings. In such cases care should be taken to have the data from each presented in similar formats for the purposes of amalgamation and comparative analysis. Alternatively, some travel managers use
data warehousing specialists to do this. But what’s it all for? Hasler points out that MI is useful both for internal purposes – visual guilt and pointing out to a department how it is faring in relation to another – as well as externally for the purpose of leverage during supplier negotiations. “There’s nothing wrong with engendering good corporate behaviour,” he says.
Traveller satisfaction reports are not about suppliers and purchasing but they are nonetheless integral to the corporate travel manager’s responsibility. As Cuschieri says, “Understanding the satisfaction of your travellers is all part of your stakeholder management. Understand your bookers as well. Their requirements will be different from the traveller.”
Management information can give you the empirical evidence you need to support your recommendations for improving the travel programme. For example, if one department head allows their team to travel business class to Europe while another says economy class only, you might use the different average cost per journey per department to argue the savings that might be achieved if a single company travel policy were introduced.
By the same token, you might use the
average hotel room cost in a city to substantiate the case for the savings that could be made by introducing a hotel programme or mandating the use of an HBA or a TMC for all hotel bookings. The examples are limitless. The mechanism is the same. Numbers aren’t just an idea. They can provide hard facts to demonstrate the travel cost reductions your proposals can make to the company’s bottom line. And that is language that any company board understands. All in all, manage- ment information is a vital part of any travel manager’s toolkit. Tony Pilcher sums it all up: “Understand your data, get to know the profile of why and where you spend and what you spend to enable you to spend in a better way going forward.”
WHO USES WHAT DATA
Different departments use management information to address different issues: • HR – employee welfare • Finance – total cost • CSR – environmental CO2 • Procurement – contract performance/cost savings • Compliance – governance/regulatory requirements • Traveller - satisfaction • Security/risk – travel to high-risk destinations
y“ Management information can give ”
ou the empirical evidence you need
to support your recommendations for improving the travel programme
66 THE BUSINESS TRAVEL MAGAZINE
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