Cos. Integrate Air, Expense Data

Companies using centrally billed airfare accounts with AirPlus or American Express this month will be able to leverage new functionalities the payment providers claim will help integrate booked travel data with spending data.

AirPlus said it is working to integrate its payment and data tools with Outtask's booking and expense reporting systems. Meanwhile, American Express last month began bringing the concept of its variance reports—which reconcile booked agency data with billed card data for corporate clients, leveraging its corporate travel management company and commercial card business—to customers using a centrally billed business travel account.

American Express senior vice president of U.S. sales and field effectiveness for U.S. commercial card Gunther Bright said the monthly reports can be accessed through the American Express @Work reporting tool for customers with more than $1 million in annual centrally billed airfare expenses.

"The reports match card billing data and detailed booking data from either air or rail travel," Bright said. "It allows a program manager to look at it to see where they're different and why. It yields some savings in terms of cost and time for our customers, as well as assists them and enables them to meet compliance objectives."

Laura Linderholm, the business analyst responsible for the payment and expense processes at Louisville, Colo.-based StorageTek, processes about $10 million annually in airfares on a centrally billed American Express account and recently began using the data reports, saying it has helped replace a manual process. To further integrate the reports, Linderholm has been able to flow the data feeds through the company's SAP expense reporting system.

"When I receive the file for airfares, it's matched with the accurate cost center information," she said. "Prior to using this Amex tool, I would have a file that came across by e-mail and I would have to spend about six hours of research to complete the records with accurate cost center information."

Meanwhile, AirPlus and Outtask—a purveyor of both expense reporting and booking tools—are working to integrate data and reconcile bookings with expense information. "The AirPlus partnership with Outtask offers our mutual customers a fully automated travel procurement, payment and reporting environment," said Richard Crum, president and CEO of AirPlus International. "This new relationship allows AirPlus to feed the level-three data to Vinnet, giving financial and travel managers a higher quality of data and a clear view of their travel program in a fully automated environment. The AirPlus invoice will be sent to Vinnet, streamlining reconciliation and expense reporting."

American Express long has been the industry's only purveyor of both charge cards and corporate travel management services, and last year announced that it was leveraging both to provide merged reports for joint customers. The reports reconcile booked agency data with billed card data and bind what traditionally have operated as two autonomous sectors within the company. While American Express intended to make the reports available to customers last December, the company in May finally began providing the reports for general use.

Amex group president of corporate travel and commercial card Ed Gilligan said the delay was primarily due to development of new benchmarking tools. "I'm hoping we can—by combining card and travel data—bring us to the next level," Gilligan said. "Most of the demand for new stuff has been around benchmarking, which is why we focused on bringing out benchmarking tools sooner and card/travel then followed that."