How to Use Data Analytics to Improve Your Travel Programs

As airfare and travel expenses continue to soar, the need for corporate travel managers to be cost-conscious is more crucial than ever. Thanks to the power of travel analytics, travel managers can not only curb costs but also improve budgeting, forecasting, and sustainability efforts, all while ensuring employee well-being.

What Are the Four Main Types of Travel Analytics?

Travel analytics are categorized into four main types, and each plays a pivotal role in optimizing travel programs:

1. Descriptive Analytics: What Happened?

Descriptive analytics offer insights into past and real-time data, summarizing historical and current spending.
Travel and data analytics in this category might include:

• Generate reports or visualizations of travel spend by location, department, employee, or period
• Analyze the distribution of expenses across travel categories, such as airfare, meals, and hotels
• Identify recurring travel destinations and locations

2. Diagnostic Analytics: Why Did It Happen?

Diagnostic analytics help you understand why something happens. By examining data patterns and correlations, you can identify the root cause. For example:

• Investigate the underlying cause of overspending
• Analyze why some trips have higher costs
• Determine factors that contribute to higher expenses

3. Predictive: What Is Likely to Happen?

Predictive analytics utilize historical data and statistical models to forecast future outcomes.
This might help:

• Anticipate future travel demand and budgets
• Predict the likelihood of non-compliant travel or policy violations
• Estimated costs based on destination, duration, and traveler profiles

4. Prescriptive: What Should We Do?

Prescriptive analytics recommend actions to enhance outcomes based on data analysis Examples include:

• Suggest cost-effective travel options based on travel and budget constraints
• Recommend optimal timing for booking travel to minimize costs
• Identify opportunities to consolidate bookings or negotiate volume discounts

The Benefits of Travel Analytics

Travel analytics play a crucial role in cost-saving, policy enforcement, risk reduction, and enhancing the traveler experience:

1. Optimize Costs

By leveraging travel and expense analytics, organizations can identify and capitalize on cost-saving opportunities. From analyzing preferred vendors to negotiating volume discounts, data-driven decisions pave the way for sustainable cost reduction without compromising quality or convenience.

2. Enforce Policy Compliance

Enforcing travel policies can be challenging, especially at scale. A travel and expense management platform can automate policy enforcement, while data analytics can help identify areas of non-compliance for corrective measures. This information can be especially helpful in complying with audits, such as those mandated by government contracts, to demonstrate compliance. By identifying areas of non-compliance, organizations can implement targeted interventions and foster a culture of accountability and fiscal responsibility.

3. Reduce Risk and Improve Safety

Travel managers can also analyze data to monitor travel patterns and identify potential risks. With this information, proactive measures can be put in place to lower risks and improve travel safety.

4. Improve Traveler Experience

Travel analytics can help organizations proactively monitor travel patterns, assess pain points, and identify potential risks to optimize the travel process and improve the overall travel experience. People analytics can help manage employee well-being and engagement.

By implementing preemptive measures, organizations can enhance travel safety and mitigate operational risks while simultaneously safeguarding employee well-being and organizational reputation.

Key Metrics and KPIs in Travel Analytics

Tracking key metrics and KPIs such as total spend, cost per trip, booking rates, preferred vendor compliance, and travel policy compliance rate enables organizations to spot trends, identify anomalies, avoid budget overruns, and optimize travel spend effectively. Commonly used metrics include:

• Total spend: Tracking all expenses related to corporate travel, including airfare, accommodation, ground transportation, and other miscellaneous costs, and comparing them to budgets and forecasts.
• Cost per trip: Measuring the average cost of business trips to provide insights into cost-effectiveness and opportunities for improvement.
• Booking rates: Analyzing the percentage of trips booked in advance to reveal the impact on fares and rates for potential cost savings.
• Preferred vendor compliance: Assessing the percentage of bookings made through preferred travel vendors to leverage negotiated rates and discounts.
• Travel policy compliance rate: Detailing employee adherence to corporate travel policies, highlighting areas where training or policy adjustments may be necessary.

Measuring these KPIs can reveal trends over time, equipping you to spot changes in behavior and spending to optimize travel spend and enhance operational efficiency.

Improve Corporate Travel Programs Through Data Analytics

Analytics give way to actionable insights, empowering organizations to unlock hidden efficiencies and drive sustainable growth in an increasingly competitive landscape. For instance, data might show cycle times for receipt to payment are not meeting your internal standards. You might want to revisit your policies and procedures or add AP automation to ensure timely payments and reduce cycle times. However, leveraging data analytics in the travel industry goes beyond mere payment processing by meticulously dissecting spending patterns to identify areas ripe for improvement.

Vendor Sourcing and Negotiation

With insights into travel patterns and spending, travel managers can look for opportunities to source suppliers and negotiate better rates. For instance, analyzing data may reveal a substantial volume of bookings within a particular hotel chain, paving the way for securing competitive corporate travel rates.

Policy Optimization

Analyzing employee travel behavior can detect patterns of non-compliance. This can help travel managers identify areas where employee behavior or policies need correction. An example might be showing that employees were regularly booking business class tickets for domestic flights — contrary to travel policy. Or there are many instances where last-minute trips were booked at higher-than-normal prices.

These instances may require further training for employees or changes to policies to encourage more advance bookings.

Demand Management

Travel and expense analytics can also help organizations forecast future travel demand based on historical data, seasonal travel, and specific initiatives. This helps to plan and allocate resources more effectively, including future budgeting implications.

For example, historical data can highlight spikes in demand for certain periods to help planners ensure adequate support staff to handle heavy periods.

Enhancing the Travel Experience

In addition to managing costs, travel managers also want to provide a safe and pleasant travel experience for employees. Gathering feedback from travelers provides invaluable insights to inform future policies and vendor negotiations. For example, analyzing feedback may reveal persistent dissatisfaction with check-in procedures or accommodations at certain hotel chains, prompting actionable improvements or negotiation for better rates.

Benchmarking

Benchmarking travel and expense data helps establish performance standards, making it easier to spot anomalies. Whether comparing against historical data, competitors, or industry benchmarks, this practice regularly reveals areas for improvement.

For example, you can track and benchmark carbon emissions from travel against industry leaders to see how you stack up. Or you can compare the average cost per night for hotel stays against industry averages.

This data can also help you track the impact of initiatives you put in place, such as seeing the impact on total spend when changing preferred vendors or negotiating better discounts for corporate travel.

Improve Efficiency and Cost-Effectiveness

Incorporating travel and expense data analysis into your travel management program can provide detailed insights into your operations to help you improve efficiency, enhance policy compliance, optimize costs, and elevate the traveler experience. By embracing data-driven decision-making, organizations can navigate the complexities of corporate travel with confidence and resilience, positioning themselves for sustained success in the digital age.

SAP Concur offers a comprehensive suite of integrated travel, expense, and invoice management solutions, including the Analytics Essentials and advanced Analytics platforms, which give organizations access to near real-time data and AI-driven tools for in-depth analysis.

Explore SAP Concur solutions today to elevate your travel analytics capabilities and reduce costs, ensure compliance, and control expenses. Are you ready to leverage the power of data analytics to seamlessly optimize your corporate travel programs?