Published on the 24/02/2014 | Written by Newsdesk
The BYO trend is impacting corporate travel budgets as employees use online booking services such as Wotif and Webjet to book accommodation and trips…
Just as consumer technology has revolutionised the enterprise technology landscape, the rise of internet enabled travel booking systems is impacting corporate travel.
Marten Jagers, managing director of Concur, said that there was a growing understanding in corporations that it would not be possible to wrestle back control of corporate travel – but he argued that by capturing all travel information in a system such as Concur, which can feed into corporate ERP systems and also ensures corporate approvals policies are followed, it would be possible to restore at least some level of control.
Jagers, who was a speaker at last week’s Techleaders Forum in Queensland, added that besides limiting risk by keeping tighter control on expenses there was also the opportunity for organisations to harness gamification in order to encourage specific behaviours.
For example he said that companies could set up the system so that employees who spent amounts below a certain threshold on their travel expenses could be rewarded with points to be used at a later date.
This would put control of the budget back in the hands of procurement executives he said.
There are also moves afoot to develop tools that will allow procurement executives to benchmark their travel expenses against those of similar enterprises.
Jagers said that the company was currently working with Google and planned to offer a system in the next six months which would allow organisations to benchmark their travel spending against other similar businesses. He said Concur had customer data about spending on half a billion different line items and data associated with $55 billion worth of travel bookings.
By analysing that information it should be possible to determine best practice travel spending guidelines for companies according to Jagers.
Concur, which bought the TripIt travel itinerary app in 2011, is a Seattle-based company and provides a range of cloud-based employee expense and travel management systems. It claims 400 Australian and New Zealand users including bluechips such as Commonwealth Bank, Rio Tinto and Bluescope.
The author attended Techleaders Forum as a guest of Media Connect.
