American Express today launched reports that reconcile booked agency data with billed card data for corporate clients, leveraging its corporate travel management company and commercial card business. Announced last August and initially slated for release late last year
(BTN, Aug. 2, 2004), the Card and Travel Variance reports now are available to corporate customers through the American Express @Work tool. As it refined the tool, Amex also discovered that clients could benefit from more detailed car rental spending data.
More than 60 U.S.-based companies already have signed up to begin using the reports this month, Amex said, adding that the reports are available to "all U.S. corporate card clients who access enhanced card reports" through the company's reporting tool. So far, Amex is offering summary data on booked and billed spend for air and car, but said it will add similar reports for lodging and other T&E categories.
"It's only natural that American Express would be the one to come out with this, since we are the only player that's very significant in card and travel," said Mark Webb, Amex senior vice president of the global client group, which oversees American Express' top customers. "This is a huge efficiency gain for travel managers, some of whom have been doing this sort of thing manually on the back of paper for years. Now that it can be automated in real time, it is tremendously valuable to them."
Since the announcement last year, Amex has piloted the reporting enhancements with a handful of corporate clients, including W.R. Grace, where travel manager Lorraine Rostanzo said they were well-received. She said that by reconciling booking and spending data, she can monitor traveler compliance and that travel suppliers correctly charge negotiated rates.
Webb last week told
BTN that the reports led to an exploration of more product development, most significantly in breaking out more details from charge card spending with car rental companies.
"Some of the companies that have been using these reports have been seeing out-of-policy refueling charges at the car rental facility," Webb said. "They're supposed to be paying $49 a day and it comes back at $77 with gas. That insight led us to create car folio reporting."
Webb said Amex is working with some Europe-based car rental firms to break out line-item details of car rental transactions, mirroring recent engagements with hotel companies to transmit hotel folio data. As with hotels, a wealth of additional taxes and fees linger behind the sum of car rental bills, and many travel managers clamor for more transactional details.
Amex said it is offering this on a client-by-client basis but would continue striking up partnerships with car rental firms to "make a bigger splash this year" with the car folio offering.