Amex Remakes Consulting Offering

American Express Business Travel has created a global advisory services unit comprised of 200 consultants focused on providing services that deliver a return on investment in the form of purchase and process savings and heightened program controls, the company announced early last week at the Association of Corporate Travel Executives conference in Atlanta.

The unit differs from Amex's Eclipse Advisory Services both in its global scope and by delving deeper into a travel program than simply air, hotel and car, said Andrew McGraw, senior vice president and general manager of American Express Business Travel for North America. Global Advisory Services—which has been in place with some clients for one year, but was formally announced last week—specifically integrates three travel practice lines: policy management, strategic sourcing and process management.

"Eclipse is clearly an area that delivers savings," he said. "We brought every other area that could possibly deliver savings to a client into the organization together. Policy today is very culture-oriented, so it's using knowledge that we have across the organization, and looking at other opportunities, which may be things as interesting as duty of care, which is around how policy treats a traveler, or environmental practices."

Pricing will depend on the size of the client organization and the breadth of its needs. Midmarket clients will be able to purchase toolsets that will help them calculate savings and internal investment.

Amex named Mike Streit vice president of the new Global Advisory Services division, which has folded in all of the company's non-transaction services including strategic meetings services, although not meetings logistics. McGraw said 30 analysts in India would do much of the behind-the-scenes work.

Amex invested millions of dollars into its new offerings, McGraw said, because it believes such services ultimately are the direction of the travel management business, given that transaction fees only make up 3 percent of total offline and online travel spend. "I don't want to underestimate the need for high-quality transaction processing," McGraw said, "but clearly, around the savings side, this is the future of the business and where we can add real incremental value."