Learn more about implementing innovation in the business trip life cycle: https://www.concur.com/blog

1. The Business Trip Life Cycle
IMPLEMENTING INNOVATION: PART TWO
On-Trip Innovation
ENABLING & INFLUENCING
TRAVELERS ON THE ROAD
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 SERVICES
While 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
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.
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.”
CLICK HERE
TO VIEW THE
ON-DEMAND
WEBINAR:
ON-TRIP
INNOVATION,
ENABLING &
INFLUENCING
TRAVELERS ON
THE ROAD

2. 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 STRATEGIES
Imagine 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
CONCUR
Concur 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