Amex Debuts Card-Based Benchmarking Tool

American Express today launched new capabilities within its @Work reporting tool that enables corporate clients to compare T&E card spend with other companies. Currently offered to roughly 150 global and multinational customers, 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 Corporate Services 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."

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 segment spend data by industry, spending levels, geography or time period, among other criteria.