The Business Trip Life CycleIMPLEMENTING INNOVATION: PART TWO

Beyond policy and the utility of configuring preferred suppliers within an online book-ing tool, reaching into the business trip

to inform and influence travelers on the road has been an elusive piece of the travel management puzzle. In a recent webinar from The BTN Group and Concur, travel management innovators shared some of their most exciting on-trip en-gagement strategies. To watch the webinar and hear all the on-trip innovation strategies pre-sented, click here.

LOCATION-BASED SERVICESWhile location-based service platforms have been discussed for some time, few travel managers take full advantage. Off-the-shelf technologies are available that will mine traveler itinerary data and message travelers on their mobile devices as they complete stages of their trips. For example, when a traveler touches down from a flight, location-based messaging can remind them of preferred ground transportation options in their arrival city or note that their booked hotel provides breakfast that is included in the corporate rate. Until now, basic messaging like this has been configured and controlled by the travel manager, said Johnny Thorsen, senior director of strategy for Concur Messaging, the location-based messaging technology built on the conTgo platform acquired by Concur in March 2013. But as many companies struggle to get started—even with off-the-shelf

solutions—some companies are taking location-based strategies to the next level. “LEGO brick makers has been using our tech-nology for a number of years,” said Thorsen, “and they are evolving now from travel manager-driven destination content to traveler-created content. They are literally asking travelers to provide their best tips [for fellow travelers] when they go to a certain destination. It’s very exciting.”

ENABLING & INFLUENCING TRAVELERS ON THE ROAD

On-Trip Innovation

EMERGING TRAVEL TREND: THE SHARING ECONOMY

Miriam Moscovici, director of emerging technolo-gies for BCD Travel, reminded travel managers that they aren’t the only ones exerting influence on the travel program. New market entrants—like Airbnb and Uber—are influencing traveler decisions on the road. Travel managers need to stay on top of these trends. “The sharing economy is expanding way be-yond car and lodging to even food and parking. Travelers are starting to use these for business,” said Moscovici. Corporate buyers should be inter-ested in what participating in the sharing economy can do to their bottom lines and what type of posi-tive or negative effect it could have on their safety and security responsibilities. In addition, they need to be talking to traditional suppliers in these catego-ries to understand what they may be developing in response to shifts in the market.

For more of Moscovici’s discussion of the sharing economy, watch the webinar.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE ON-DEMAND

WEBINAR:

ON-TRIP INNOVATION, ENABLING &

INFLUENCING TRAVELERS ON

THE ROAD

LEGO is not clearing a path for all recommen-dations to be incorporated into the messaging tool. Rather, potential recommendations flow to a central travel management center that evaluates what is important enough to put in the rules en-gine for the tool. Once they make the rule, said Thorsen, “In one minute, this is a live push of the information to any employee going to that location. Suddenly, the travel management department can draw on the knowledge of their best travelers.”

LEVERAGING CONSUMER LOYALTY PROGRAMS As a procurement executive, Cindy Heston, senior director of travel and events at WellPoint, always keeps the tenets of preferred supplier relationships at the forefront, but she is also keenly aware of the need to engage the traveler on an individual level to drive awareness and decisions on the road. “There is a shift in the whole savings mental-ity—the policy and policeman mentality—to a more service focus for the customer and more consumer feel,” she said. To achieve that, Heston has not only been working with technologies, but also studying her travelers to understand travel fre-quency, patterns and consumer loyalty programs that influence their choices. “Based on past data and analytics, [we deter-mine] the footprint for the individual traveler or we develop the status of the traveler,” she said. “By develop [I mean that] we see if they are in a mar-ket where they could be persuaded to use our pre-ferred suppliers. They may be 50/50 or 70/30 and we decide how we could message them to get into the programs we want them to be aligned with, but still make sure it meets their needs.” As traveler status is developed with preferreds, personal benefits with those suppliers increase—eligibility for hotel room upgrades, preferred board-ing and seating on flights, free baggage, etc. Travel-ers see results that benefit them, and, said Heston, “there are items that benefit the budget.” With an increasingly “developed” traveler base, Heston took on the challenge of segmenting her travel population based on that status. “I can see there are [travelers] with similar patterns and op-portunities to fit into the program,” she said. “Let’s bundle these individuals into groups and as they are on the road, send targeted messages remind-ing them about their status and their additional opportunities—not only as WellPoint associates—but also on their individual status with supplier.

ENABLING PRODUCTIVITY THROUGH SOCIAL STRATEGIESImagine a technology that could show—as on a radar—where employees are located today, tomor-row and the next day, so that colleagues could take advantage of converging schedules to increase productivity or decrease travel costs. Now, imagine that technology using data that already exists. Concur’s Thorsen calls it “Social Travel Engage-ment” and, he said, “it is evolving in our customer base in a number of exciting ways.” The most developed solution is using existing traveler risk data fed from Concur to a proprietary app built by a client company that sees 5 percent to 10 percent of its employees traveling on any given day. “[The client’s] IT department was challenged to come up with a way of getting employees to interact when they are traveling—and not just to connect a select group of people—not just road warriors, for example, but even for non-travelers and on a global basis.” The value, according to Thorsen, is to facilitate some basic logistics like shared transport, but even better, it allows trav-elers and non-travelers to meet up for restaurant events or for ad hoc meetings—and all of these save the company money and resources. The key to making the app successful was to put control with the employee. Those who join can see what others are doing over the next 48 hours, but only if they make themselves visible to others. “You have to give your own location away to see the location of others,” said Thorsen. In addition, employees have control over what type of interaction they want to interlink with the tool. If they are only looking for shared transport, they interlink only that category. If they only want to network, they can choose only that category. If they want to meet for business, the same idea. Or, they can choose a combination. Once they sign up and make themselves visible, they can look for others by data, time, location or shared interlink categories. “In this company’s case 85 percent of 1,000 employees have confirmed that they want this, and it can be done with the data that is there now.”

REGISTER NOW for “Implementing Innova- tion: Post-Trip” airing live September 23, 2014 and archived for on-demand viewing until March 22, 2015. Presented by The BTN Group and Concur.

ABOUT CONCURConcur is a leading provider of integrated travel and expense management solutions. Concur’s easy-to-use Web-based and mobile solutions help com-panies control costs, save time and protect employees. Concur’s open platform enables the entire travel and expense ecosystem to access and extend Concur’s T&E cloud. Concur’s systems adapt to individual corporate and employee prefer-ences, and scale to meet the needs of companies from small to large.

Learn more at www.concur.com

ON-TRIP INNOVATIONENABLING & INFLUENCING TRAVELERS ON THE ROAD