small and medium businesses. And with Barclaycard, there is the option to combine the two, catering for centrally billed flights and small-ticket items that are individually billed. Traveldoo’s clients, however, are bucking the trend and some 40 per cent of them are sticking to cash advances. “We were expecting it to decline and that is not happening. Companies work out how much the trip is going to cost, give travellers the money and justify it afterwards. They ensure that travellers are neither in credit nor out of pocket,” says Daniel Fitzgerald, chief product officer. Expense management epitomises the much vaunted control and visibility that travel managers want, but now that hotel spend is tamed, taxis, fuel and restaurant bills represent the Wild West of the sector. Airplus’s Dine+go will help harness some of this, as will virtual cards; and use of corporate cards in conjunction with an expense management system brings greater control.
Also showing signs of being difficult to
control are millennial travellers, who do not like being told what to do, making compliance a potential minefield. More flexible travel policies is one way of handling this, including use of the sharing economy, although this can lead to fragmented spend.
VISIBILITY AND CONTROL “Payments play a vital role in achieving the balance. If there is a consistent payment method, even if travellers are not using the company’s preferred supplier, the payment data can act as the ‘golden thread’ that gives the company visibility and control over the entire programme,” says Barclaycard’s Parpou.
EVEN IF TRAVELLERS ARE NOT USING THE COMPANY’S PREFERRED SUPPLIER, THE PAYMENT DATA CAN ACT AS THE ‘GOLDEN THREAD’
If technology is driving the day, then artifical intelligence (AI) and bots hover on the horizon. When Airplus processes a transaction on behalf of a TMC or company, there may be information missing that would make it easier to reconcile, such as cost centre or em- ployee number. “In the past, this has had to be corrected manually, which
delays the transaction and sending it to the expense management system,” says Airplus International’s Spelman. “We are using AI to look at previous transactions and use that logic or learning to pre- empt what those fields would be and get it closer to 100 per cent accurate so that we are not delaying the process. We are getting 86 per cent improvement in the data that is supplied, so now only 14 per cent is missing and processed as before.” This is currently being tested with three Airplus International clients. Concur’s integration with Alexa for Business is being beta-tested for simple voice commands: “Alexa ask Concur, what is my flight number?” for example. Further benefits may come from integra- tion with Hipmunk. “Business travellers expect a similar experience when it comes to corporate expense management,” says Parpou. Expense management is becoming ever more forensic and dynamic, and its technology is racing to keep up.
34 BBT CORPORATE CARDS SUPPLEMENT 2018
In association with
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