Tool To Benchmark Expense

Redmond, Wash.-based expense vendor Concur Technologies in conjunction with travel management consulting and benchmarking firm Runzheimer International this week is expected to launch a new benchmarking tool for users of its expense reporting system. Through the Concur Benchmarking Service, customers can compare how traveler spending lines up with current market prices and other companies' spends for air, car, hotel, meals and per diems.

Runzheimer will extract travel data from 200 U.S. cities and 100 cities abroad and display through Concur's expense tool airfares for up to 500 domestic and 100 international city pairs.

In addition to keeping tabs on current market prices, the offering—which comes at an additional price to customers—also benchmarks travel and spending trends at companies by market segment and company size. "It details in general what is your average travel budget, is it up or down this year, are you implementing travel alternatives or not, what you are doing with your corporate card program," said Fred Ingham, Concur vice president of product management.

Concur said it is targeting customers of all sizes, noting the tool will assist with traveler compliance—an issue the vendor said is more important than ever.

"One of the important things when you're setting a policy is to make sure it's not too tight and not too loose. It's got to be that right bowl of porridge that Goldilocks is looking for," Ingham said. "So how do you set what that just-right price should be for dinner or for a hotel when you're setting up an audit rule? The way you do that is by referring to the benchmarking data. It gives you very current, reasonable rates that can set up an audit flag in our system. Customers will be able to use this system to keep their audit rules in synch—not too tight and not too loose—to catch the right level of compliance and provide the right level of reinforcement."

The tool also allows customers to use the data to set spending caps for what can be an allowable expense for each travel segment. For example, if a traveler files an expense that surpasses the cap set by a company based on the benchmarking data, the system can red-flag it for further review.

Ingham also said the tool can be used for budgeting and planning. "If you're planning for the upcoming fiscal year, you can come up with average prices for trips based on your travel patterns. You can budget effectively." Likewise, Ingham said customers could use the data to determine which cities would be the most cost effective for holding meetings by comparing costs for air, car, hotel as well as other expenses.

Although the partnership is explicitly between Concur and Runzheimer, Ingham said the benchmarking firm leverages data from a variety of sources. In addition to its own proprietary research on travel trends and pricing, Runzheimer also uses benchmarking and pricing information from Amadeus for global distribution system airfare data, AgentWare for Web fares, Smith Travel Research for hotel data and Salk International for taxi and shuttle pricing to and from major airports, among others. "What's great about Runzheimer is that they're bringing it together into one place, in a very user-friendly format over the Web," Ingham said. He added that airfare prices are updated every two weeks, hotel information is updated quarterly and car rental and meal data are updated annually.