Expedia-owned online booking and expense-management provider
Traveldoo has added geocoding and voice recognition to its mobile app, allowing
out-of-pocket expenses to be added without manually keying in information, the
company announced at last month's Business Travel Show in London.
A traveler visiting a restaurant, for example, can use geolocation
to suggest the name and address of the establishment. Once the traveler
confirms that information, it automatically is loaded, along with date and time
details, into an expense report. The traveler can verbally dictate the amount
paid and add a photo of the receipt.
While other providers have launched voice-capture
functionality, Traveldoo claimed it is the first expense provider to offer the
combination of geolocation, voice control and digital receipts. "You don't
need to type in anything," said president and CEO Nabih El Aroussi. "You
can say the amount into the app and have the receipt time-stamped and
data-stamped. It is for people who operate in a much more mobile environment."
Traveldoo launched its mobile app in 2014. The other key
feature of the upgrade is that it can be used offline. The app holds data
before uploading once a connection is re-established. The rebooted app is
available this month on Android, and other platforms are scheduled to follow "shortly,"
the company said.
El Aroussi 15 years ago founded Traveldoo and in 2011 sold
the company to Expedia, at which time it claimed to have 4,000 customers in 50
countries. El Aroussi told BTN half its
business is derived from directly signed corporate clients and half through
travel management companies. France, its home, is Traveldoo's number-one market,
but the United Kingdom is its fastest-growing area.
The company intends to expand within Europe in 2015, setting
its sights on the United States for 2016. El Aroussi stressed that Traveldoo
operates autonomously from its parent, a major U.S. player. "Expedia has
no influence on the development of our product or the underlying technology,"
he said. "We are operating exactly as we were three years ago. We can
still be nimble and move fast."
As is the case among many providers in this field, expense
management seems to dominate Traveldoo’s product development at present. "At
some point, the battle to add content [to the booking tool] will have finished,"
El Aroussi said. Additionally, "[standalone] booking tools are dead—people
are asking for much more than that."
El Aroussi also regards last month's signature of a deal with Conferma to provide virtual card payments through the Traveldoo
booking tool as a milestone. Such Traveldoo transactions have more than doubled
over the past 12 months, and El Aroussi expects growth to continue at the same
trajectory.
Expense Providers Embrace Voice Capture
Other expense-management suppliers have rolled out some
voice-capture functionality. Coupa, for example, last month introduced it along
with several new features, including auto-classification of commonly used
expense items. Coupa users can input an expense's date, cost, location and
associated event by speaking into the mobile app. Using “intelligent voice
capture," Coupa’s system then automatically populates the expense item
into a report.
Oracle Fusion Expense since 2012 has had a similar voice
capture functionality that also automatically populates expense items,
according to the company.
— JoAnn DeLuna
contributed to this report.