Amex Benchmarks Card

American Express last week launched new capabilities within its @Work reporting platform that enable corporate clients to compare T&E card spend with other companies. Currently offered to roughly 150 global and multinational customers—representing more than $30 billion in T&E spend—the benchmarking tool gives users "airline and car rental spend for North America and Europe and hotel information worldwide," American Express said in a statement.

"Our clients wanted some type of scorecard to help them evaluate the effectiveness of their T&E programs," said American Express global client group vice president Shane Berry. "Now, with external peer benchmarking, they can evaluate and improve sourcing effectiveness, identify areas of potential savings and provide comprehensive reports to senior executives to demonstrate program value and measure that performance against their peers."

While corporate travel benchmarking historically has been conducted on an ad-hoc basis, Amex said, Global Card Benchmarking "provides a timely, consistent and cost-effective way to assess the performance of expense management programs." Additionally, Berry said that Amex's benchmarking efforts primarily have been restricted to internal comparisons, yet one aim of the tool is to allow clients to compare how they are faring relative to comparable "peer groups," whether by industry, which Amex buckets into 10 categories, or volume.

Sample metrics include average cost per air mile, average hotel transaction amount, average spend per property and average daily rental car rate. Amex said users can further segment spend by geography or time period, among other criteria, adding that T&E card benchmarking data would be updated on a monthly basis. "If your benchmarking is good, you tell your boss. If your benchmarking is bad, you tell your supplier," Berry said.

According to Honeywell manager of travel services Jeanne Young, the offering could prove a valuable resource at negotiating time. "This could be very powerful when I go to talk to my suppliers," she said. "Now, we'll be able to tell them with the data. Data will tell the story and we will speak less when data tells the story."

While American Express initially is offering the functionality to a limited customer base, Berry said there is room to move the tool beyond its largest customers. "We launched a tool about a year ago based on travel data," he said. "Now, we have a tool for travel customers globally. We learned a lot from that tool and we took a lot of that knowledge and applied it to the card tool. The intent on the card side is that this is the first release. We will constantly be updating it and it's very likely that we will open up access to a much broader range of clients."

Lee Ann Murphy, director of global procurement for chemical-supply firm Imperial Chemical Industries, said the reporting functionality complements data offered through a comparable benchmarking tool offered on the travel agency side. Berry said the two can be used in conjunction.

"The key is we have both now," Murphy said. "To get the fully rich story of how your program is going, you need both booked and card data. You can report on noncompliance and you can use it from a supplier perspective as well."

To quell potential concerns about compromising proprietary data, Berry said the tool "will not show a benchmark unless we have at least four organizations in that bucket. Companies don't have to worry about whether their information will be compromised."