TQ3 Maritz To Roll Out Web-Based Benchmarking Tool

<B>TQ3 Maritz To Roll Out Web-Based Benchmarking Tool</B>

By Megan Hjermstad

TQ3 Maritz Travel Solutions early next month will introduce to its clients a Web-based benchmarking tool that will compare client data with industry averages provided by American Express Consulting Benchmarking Group, publisher of the Business Travel Monitor. TQ3 clients, along side their own data, will have online access to average airfares by city pair and class of service, and average nightly hotel and daily car rates by destination.

"Data Advantage Reporting is really a superior product. It has addressed the full spectrum of air, car and hotel, and has enormous data integrity that reflects corporate negotiated rates from over 4,000 corporations," said Chris Bomze, director of business development for TQ3 Maritz. "Clients can see if they are paying more in business class and really pinpoint that. It is powerful information that clients can take to suppliers."

Through research conducted with a sample base of clients, TQ3 Maritz found that its customers were looking for enhanced benchmarking information to assist with supplier negotiations from a non-customer base, as well as from its own customer base.

"We're very committed to providing clients with information to make decisions and improve bottom line performance," Bomze said. "When our customers told us we needed to go to an external source, we looked at the top benchmarking tools in the marketplace. Based on our needs, we thought American Express Consulting provided the best solution."

TQ3 Maritz receives a monthly data feed from American Express Consulting, which is imported into TQ3 Maritz's own proprietary global reporting system, Northstar, which hosts its client data. The benchmarking tool, Data Advantage Reporting, then creates reports based on a company's actual data so clients are not required to manually enter their information into a database.

Data Advantage Reporting will produce quarterly reports with month-over-month, quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year comparisons. While clients can customize reports for city pairs according to their unique travel patterns, they cannot, at this time, segment American Express aggregate data to compare against companies with similar travel spend, same business type or same headquarters location. TQ3 Maritz will integrate Data Advantage Reporting into a suite of decision support information tools, called Benchmarking Essentials, which includes its existing benchmarking products, Knowledge Essentials and Peer Exchanges. Knowledge Essentials provides clients with updates on corporate travel issues, statistics and trends through regular newsletters and white papers. Peer Exchanges offers a network to share ideas and interface with other TQ3 Maritz clients. "We already had Peer and Knowledge Essentials. Now, we are bringing everything under Benchmarking Essentials and adding robust new reporting capabilities with this licensing agreement," Bomze said.

He said the agreement with American Express' consulting group is unrelated to TQ3 Maritz's existing relationship with American Express to handle meeting and incentive travel for some Amex clients. "We didn't walk into this saying we need to pick Amex," Bomze said. "We just happened to have a relationship already and we were very comfortable with them.