The Key To Data Case Studies
Data Snapshots
Travel managers are expected to know which travellers are acting out of policy and manage their poor booking behaviour.
But this can be a thankless task when reporting to management so that these offenders can then be advised of the cost this is creating for the company.
FCM has alleviated this with its concept of Business Intelligence 3.0, the decentralisation of data to remove the need for repetitive reporting. Previously an account manager would run a report, send that report to the travel manager, who would then be able to identify the departments with the out of policy behaviour.
The travel manager would then have to fish through all of this data, reach out to the managers involved and tell them what these employees have cost the company.
To combat this, our Data Snapshots use decentralisation concept to send a message directly to the traveller about their booking behaviour and their cost impact to the programme overall – both negative and positive.
If they are booking in advance, using preferred suppliers and driving savings for the business, this will be commended. But if they are booking at the last minute, choosing expensive fares and using non-preferred suppliers, they will be told about it, along with information about the cost of their booking practices.
FCM uses automation to put these useful analytics right in front of the end user by having conversations around what needs to be managed, then setting parameters and leaving the technology to do the rest.
Programme Engagement Analytics
Simply knowing what you spent last quarter is not enough for travel managers and it is something a self-service analytics platform should put at their fingertips at all times.
So with improved travel technology now in the market, the more important question to be asked is how does the traveller engage with the technology and how can this allow a TMC to enhance the experience of the traveller, travel booker and travel manager to optimise the programme as a whole?
By integrating FCM’s Clientbank Reporting & Analytics platform, the power of all of your data is enhanced; integrating disparate data sources to measure programme engagement, traveller app usage, analytics on reporting interaction and real-time “Traveller Sentiment Score” – all made possible by integrating our mobile platform to your reporting platform.
FCM now reports in 3D, offering a deeper understanding of programme engagement and the chance to implement strategies to optimise the experience for each customer persona.
Traveller Impact Analysis
FCM continually takes on board feedback from its Client Advisory Group to develop new concepts and features for its travel programmes including leveraging data in different ways.
When 80% of travel managers showed interest in further analysis around the impact of travel to their travellers, FCM developed traveller level analytics to benchmark the likely impact of these journeys on them.
The solution gauged class usage to traveller time in the air, low cost carrier usage, hours in the air, single flight legs, travel over weekends and other metrics. It then took this concept a step further by also looking at what the cost increase implications would be on the programme if new ideas around travellers’ welfare were implemented.
Often Account Managers are asked to model specific programme enhancements that would make travellers happier, for example moving flights from economy to premium economy on heavily-travelled routes, the cost of a minimum standard of hotel nightly rates and improvements to car rental programmes.
FCM has found that in some instances changing an element of the policy to give travellers greater allowances resulted in a win for traveller satisfaction, while the cost increase to the programme was minimal. However, it is not just about costsaving modeling anymore.
New analytics available to FCM make policy simulation easy, allowing clients to see what cost impact and traveller enhancement in a hypothetical scenario would entail. If these changes to the programme would be positive, it can then be implemented. Here you can see an example of a dashboard view detailing this kind of information based on traveller activity.
Customisation
FCM prides itself on ensuring your account manager has the power to solve customer challenges with our Clientbank integration capabilities.
These custom C-Level dashboards replicate Bloombergstyle spending analytics, getting to the point for a simple understanding of high/low spend and programme performance.
Our custom compliance dashboards can also show hotel programmes by city, making it easy to identify anything not within booking policies, outliers with the introduction of percentile reporting triggers – focusing on the 90% percentile outlying offenders so we can just focus on the ones driving non-compliance and leave alone the ones booking within policy.
By integrating with expense platforms, FCM also customises dashboards to see granular details such as programme leakage by comparing agency spend vs. spend expensed while drilling down into additional data points such as ancillary costs and set budget by cost centre and division for example.