ThoughtSpot
may be a small company, with 200 employees and just 100 actual travelers, but
it's got big ambitions and international office locations. The venture-backed
business intelligence software startup began operations two-and-a-half years
ago. After some ramp-up time spent in the Wild West of business travel, the BI
firm chose a mega agency and a well-known expense provider to introduce some
structure. "The service was good," said VP of operations Chris Brozek,
adding that ThoughtSpot took advantage of agency rates and other benefits because
the company didn't have preferred agreements of its own. But as an agile
startup, ThoughtSpot was looking for a paradigm shift and a level of technology
innovation it wasn't getting from the big agency.
"We
had our [travel] policy in place and that was helping us track and save, but
the reality is that I didn't have any way to benchmark my expenses," said
Brozek. "TripActions changed that game for us." TripActions was
founded in May 2015 by CEO Ariel Cohen and CTO Ilan Twig. Like a couple of
other new platforms—Rocketrip is probably the best known—TripActions crunches
real-time market data to arrive at a "price to beat" based on the
parameters entered for a trip. Unlike Rocketrip, it enables bookings, pulling
in content from Priceline brands and Sabre, and Cohen said the company is in
active talks with several other content providers to expand its range. On the
machine learning side, the platform learns about users through their bookings.
For new users, the tool makes assumptions based on data from other travelers.
If refines offerings for individuals as their history grows.
"To be relevant to the user, we can't give many
choices; we had to extremely personalize," said Cohen, adding that the
platform has reached the point where users always end up picking the first,
second or third hotel on the search list. "That's very powerful to the
user," he said.
For the corporation, it also matters that the curated
options present savings off the price to beat. That's not always possible, but
when it is, the choices are prioritized not only by price but also by
properties and itineraries that are attractive to the user. The reward for
booking a "savings" itinerary is cash in the form of gift cards based
on a percent of the total savings off of the price to beat.
TripActions charges booking fees but also makes commissions
and threshold incentives like an agency. While the company claims it can reduce
travel spend by as much as 30 percent, Brozek said ThoughtSpot is likely saving
10 percent off market rates. "At the end of the day, any traveler has a
preference for carriers or routes; maybe they are optimum or not. TripActions
will put together preferences, but the other option has the incentive in place.
I don't know how much of a switch rate we get there, or if Option A was the
perfect option." Either way, it's a win for ThoughtSpot because the tool
ensures policy rate or better.
"There's machine learning and AI living under the
covers there. We don't have to see it working, but our travelers like the fact
that TripActions works more like consumer tools," said Brozek.
Cohen admits there is still work to do on the
agent side but also said the system is getting better at figuring out complex
itineraries so fewer travelers are escalated to agents. Brozek said his
travelers almost never use the live-agent support. "We don't want to talk
to people," he said about organizing business travel logistics. Asked
about travel disruptions assistance, he said his travelers prefer to figure
it out on their own.