Nine months after MasterCard International announced partnerships to transmit electronic folios from a handful of hotel companies, commercial cleaning supplies company JohnsonDiversey, through its Outtask Vinnet expense reporting system, is among the first to receive the data.
Sturtevant, Wis.-based JohnsonDiversey joins the ranks of other companies that are accepting line item details from hotels electronically, including ConocoPhillips and Rockwell Automation, which last year became among the first such users to accept folio data through a Visa agreement with hotel providers.
Among charge card networks, Visa and MasterCard have made the most progress toward fulfilling travel managers' demands for folio data, as American Express has yet to announce folio partnerships. MasterCard in February announced partnerships with Carlson Hotels Worldwide, Choice Hotels International and Hilton Hotels Corp., following Visa, which last year signed agreements with Choice, Hilton and Prime Hospitality to transmit data
(BTN, Feb. 9).Following a pilot that began in August, JohnsonDiversey accounts payable analyst of non-inventory payables Brenda Jackson said electronic hotel folio data already are penetrating "several diverse groups" within the company and JohnsonDiversey now is in the midst of enabling companywide access.
"We're definitely beyond the pilot, as far as identifying the data and capturing the data," Jackson said. "I'm now in the process of rolling it out to our company. The data improves the overall efficiency of the tool in that it prepopulates the data, so travelers are not trying to figure out a hotel bill any more."
Jackson said electronic folios are transmitted daily through charge card file feeds and are then prepopulated into Vinnet and matched to the appropriate user's expense report. Travelers filing reports then are able to validate and, if necessary, edit the expenses.
Jackson said that her company worked closely with Outtask software developers to accept, map and break out the data into its proper categories. Since JohnsonDiversey employs a central payment structure for settling card transactions, Jackson was adamant about separating personal expenses from those directly related to business. As such, mini-bar bills, movie expenses and other ancillary non-business purchases automatically are sorted out of the system.
"What we've modified is the mapping," Jackson said. "For example, movie purchases would automatically map to a personal expense, which Vinnet subtracts from the amount that will be paid by the card. The traveler is aware that's the amount they'll have to pay themselves."
As the system can identify which expenses are personal and which will be reimbursed, Jackson also wanted to enable each expense type to be matched and placed in the correct expense category. Not only are various hotel expenses downloaded into the system, but they are automatically sorted. Guest room charges are mapped into the room box as dinner expenses are mapped into the meal column, which initially posed a challenge to Jackson.
"For us, for example, I made the decision to have all meals at a hotel mapped to the dinner category," she said. "Based on our demographics and the data coming across, that generally is our most common expense type for meals. Sometimes a user will have to come in and change a dinner to a lunch, for example, but that's very minimal. We haven't experienced a lot of cases where they've had to edit it."
With roughly 3,000 expense report filers and 1,700 T&E cardholders using GE Capital-issued MasterCard cards, the company has ensured penetration of preferred payment and reporting tools through a mandate and a central payment structure. "We're running well over 90 percent," she said. As such, Jackson—whose department works closely with sourcing and travel—foresees strong data that, when negotiating time rolls around, will support contracting with hotel companies.
"The more users I have on, the more data I can accumulate," she said. "Step two is when I'll start analyzing and providing data to both sourcing and travel so we can take it to the next level, which would be data for leveraging contracts." Jackson said by next spring she would have the penetration necessary to begin meaningful data analysis.
Tom Formberg, director of business services at Rockwell Automation, continues to accept level three data into its Concur expense system from the company's JPMorgan Chase Visa card
(BTN, Aug. 25, 2003). "By getting that information, the employee can create their expense report more readily, and it makes the process that much more easily done," he said. "There is prepopulation that we use and it does do that for us." While Formberg said electronic folio transmissions speed expense filing, the level of penetration among preferred hotels has not provided particularly meaningful data for negotiations.
While the latest incarnation of folio transmission comes through relationships between hotel companies, charge card vendors and expense reporting providers, IBM played a critical role in the amoebic stage of hotel folio evolution. The company in 2000 incorporated electronic folio capability in its Expense Reporting Solution and then required its preferred hotel suppliers to provide data for its own travelers—if they wanted to keep their share of IBM's significant room night volume.
While IBM has made strides within its own travel program to attain the coveted folio data, which can be used to prepopulate expense reports, many companies have neither the volume nor the leverage to make such demands on preferred hotels. Therefore, it has been left up to charge card vendors to negotiate for the data transmissions with hotel companies.
JohnsonDiversey, ConocoPhillips and Rockwell Automation remain the exceptions, since neither Visa nor MasterCard command the lion's share of penetration in the commercial card market, particularly among the largest corporate travel spenders, where American Express is king. Hotel companies that Visa and MasterCard have partnered with only comprise a fraction of hotel spend at many companies.
Yet, the partnerships were a good fit for JohnsonDiversey and cover a large, although undisclosed, number of room nights at the company, Jackson said. "Our number one preferred hotel chain, which is Hilton, is on board. That's wonderful," she said.
While JohnsonDiversey uses Outtask's Vinnet system to download folio data, MasterCard senior vice president of corporate payment solutions Steve Abrams said that in addition to its proprietary reporting system, Expensys, Concur, Geac, Gelco, Necho Systems, Oracle, Peoplesoft and SAP all can accept folio.
Tom DePasquale, president and CEO of Outtask, said "this hotel data alone moves corporate enterprises several steps closer to a paperless travel and expense process." Yet, steps toward full folio availability for all companies remain ahead.
"E-folio has been a benefit that we've been hungry for because of the various efficiencies," according to Colleen Guhin, global travel manager for supply management at ON Semiconductor. "Yet, what good is it if only one or two chains provide the data? We really need it across the board if we are going to truly change procedures."