Data Deluge To Drive Deals

<B> Data Deluge To Drive Deals</B>

By Lynn Woods

Booking a sedan used to be a haphazard process, for which the boss' secretary made the arrangements and bills were paid without anybody really paying much attention to how much it cost.

Now this final frontier of travel management has come under the scrutiny of cost-conscious corporations. Technological innovations on the part of the major suppliers are not only speeding up the reservation process, but also enabling corporate accounts to get the data they need to better negotiate their ground transportation.

For example, Empire International, a Norwood, N.J.-based ground transportation network that serves a number of corporations in the state's pharmaceutical alley, has developed interfaces with several credit card companies to provide customized, detailed reports to a handful of large clients.

Empire recently wrote an interface for Montvale, N.J.-based KPMG that enabled its credit card supplier, Diners Club, to include such details as where the car was picked up and dropped off, and what extra fees were charged, on its credit card statements.

"Our industry is going through a big change," said Empire president David Seelinger. "Consolidation is helping to raise the bar in terms of what it takes to work with the large companies. Some companies want to allocate the cost back to individuals, while others want to assign it back to a specific division or department." To help provide corporations with the customization they require, Empire last year bought Paragon Software.

Another Empire client, Becton Dickenson of Franklin Lakes, N.J., since October has been receiving customized reports from Empire--its exclusive sedan service provider in the region--as part of a new initiative to better manage its ground transportation costs.

"We worked as a team to develop the metrics, in terms of cost savings and service measures," said Virginia Tseperis, Becton Dickenson's worldwide manager of travel and meeting services. Becton Dickenson books approximately 22,000 trips a year with Empire.

The weekly reports, which are rolled up monthly and e-mailed to Tseperis, break out the company's rides by destination, enabling the travel manager to see at a glance where the largest volumes are. Since Empire automatically pools rides for employees where possible, the reports also show the number of shared rides and the resulting savings.

The number of service incidents, including their date, time, status and cause, also is noted in the reports. Empire and Becton Dickenson are proactive about identifying and fixing problems, so costly mistakes can be avoided in the future, Tserpsis said.

To push up usage, Becton Dickenson has embarked on a campaign to educate its travel agency, Rosenbluth International, about the ground transportation program. Agents have been supplied with a list of frequently asked questions, including the time frame in which they must book a car to avoid extra fees.

Becton Dickenson also is coming up with additional strategies to save on its car costs, and negotiating rates with Empire for destinations with the highest volumes. On the rental side, it is expanding its program by bringing Enterprise rental cars onsite. Visitors arriving at Newark Airport will be picked up by Empire and taken to company headquarters, where they'll pick up their rental cars.

Other companies are using purchasing cards to book car services as a way to obtain more data about their ground transportation. Manhattan-based Colgate-Palmolive, which spends about $2 million a year on car services, was using 200 suppliers before consolidating with eight sedan companies two years ago.

As part of the consolidation, Colgate-Palmolive set up a dispatch center manned by staff from all its preferred vendors, and included proprietary software from each. The company also began billing all ground transportation to a purchasing card customized for it by American Express. The card provides specific details on each transaction, enabling the travel department to track the cost of car services. Said director of corporate travel Cyndi Perper, "There was no oversight before, and some huge bills were being put through." The card also can be used by employees who don't have T&E cards, so they can use car services locally without paying out of pocket.

The car companies benefit from improved cash flow, since they're getting paid within three days. Perper said that use of the purchasing card also has been extended to premium guests. "Anywhere around the world, you can call into our dispatcher here, get picked up and have the transaction billed centrally to us," she said. Travelers also can put in a request for a limo through AXI, American Express's direct booking product, which automatically coordinates the time of pickup with the employee's departing flight.

But Perper said the biggest benefit of using the card is that Colgate-Palmolive now has the information it needs to get better deals in negotiations. "It's hard to negotiate a good rate without the detail," she said. "Our next step is to go back to the negotiating table with greater data." The company also now is looking "at more nationally oriented companies" to further consolidate ground transportation at all its U.S. locations.

BASF Corp., a $7 billion manufacturer of pharmaceuticals, chemicals and other materials, also uses a purchasing card for ground transportation. Launched six months ago, the program is designed for guests, consultants and other nonemployees who need transportation to BASF headquarters. Employees continue to use American Express's T&E card for their sedan needs.

Previously, said manager of supply support programs David Rice, BASF set up numerous nonemployee accounts and used special invoices to charge specific departments. But this unwieldy system often resulted in billings to the wrong department and late payments to car service vendors. So the company decided to put these transactions on its existing purchasing card, with charges routed to specific departments through the financial ledger system.

Car arrangements for nonemployees are managed by the human resources department, which calls or faxes the list of people needing rides to Empire, as well as where to pick them up, and assigns a number charging the ride to a specific department. At the end of the month, Empire electronically sends a record of all charges to BASF.

Although each transaction has an identifying number, an on-screen prompt asks the cardholder which department should be charged. "We insisted on asking the question to make sure human resources isn't charged," said Rice. The charges are then automatically routed to the correct cost centers.

Using the purchasing card enables BASF to get more data, including the date, name of rider, where they're being picked up and delivered, the amount of the ride and the tip. "We can take the data and do an analysis electronically," Rice said. Quick payment to the vendor is also a benefit, he said.

Advances also are being made in the booking process. KPMG, which spends about $2 million on sedans in the region, a third of its total nationwide volume, also is consolidating ground transportation. To facilitate the booking process with Empire, KPMG is beginning a pilot in which each transaction queued through Sabre will be confirmed within two minutes. That's a big improvement over standard bookings in the CRS, which take anywhere from 20 minutes to several hours to get confirmed.

To provide the instant confirmations, Empire is running a script that selects and strips the information from Sabre. "We're updating the script so Empire can electronically strip the data into their system," said Karen Vander Ploeg, KPMG's manager of travel operations.

Somerset, N.J.-based Pharmacia & Upjohn also is seeking to make the limo booking process agentless, through integration into its third-party software, CoRRe. CoRRe supplier Travel Technologies Group is working with Genisys Reservation Systems, the system Pharmacia & Upjohn's agents use to book their preferred limo suppliers, to create the functionality within the software, and automatically route transactions to another service if a car isn't available from the first supplier requested.

This month WorldTravel Partners-BTI Americas, based in Atlanta, will begin installing a new ground transportation booking service called Saturn for a test run with its client Arthur Andersen. All rates from the company's preferred suppliers will reside on Saturn's Web site, and the service will automatically book cars based on the corporation's policy, with its restrictions loaded into the system, according to Greg Tuccillo, president of Saturn Internet Reservation Systems Inc. Saturn has signed on with Worldspan and is forming an agreement with Sabre. The product will be launched late this summer.

Meanwhile, corporate travel agents who book sedans through Sabre will notice a change by the end of the year. Currently classified within Sabre's Extension Program, the eight limo companies participating in Sabre, along with Genisys Reservations System, will have the opportunity to benefit from the more robust functionality of Sabre's car host category--traditionally limited to car rental companies--by year-end, said Sabre product manager, Greg Venne. The change will result in more data being transmitted at the time of reservation, he said, and better integration with the rest of the travel itinerary.