Carlson Wagonlit Travel's new proprietary analytics tool captures, consolidates, standardizes and cleans data from travel management company bookings, expense tools, corporate cards and HR, said CWT chief data scientist and VP Eric Tyree. Unlike CWT reporting tool AnalytIQs, which similarly captures expense and card data, Travel Consolidator integrates the four data sources into one file. It also still allows users to view each data source in its own silo, as well. "Sometimes de-integrated data is useful … because the system that processed the transaction tells you something about the expense [like] whether the data is possibly travel-related or not," Tyree said.
Travel Consolidator complements AnalytIQs, which will continue to be available to CWT clients. "AnalytIQs is focused on travel data reporting, managing travel programs and traveler security, [while] Travel Consolidator focuses on leveraging integrated card, travel and expense data to better manage off-channel spend, suppliers and compliance," Tyree said.
According to CWT, integrated data also provides valuable information on spending outside official channels, such as flights and hotels booked on personal cards and poorly understood costs like airline seat-selection charges, meals, laundry and incidentals. Travel consolidator uses algorithms to standardize and normalize the data and attach long-tail expense types to trips and to the travelers who incurred them. Costs then can be analyzed by trip, cost center, organizational structure, on-channel versus off-channel and supplier, among other views.