BCD's consulting arm Advito has launched a travel intelligence
and analytics practice powered by data visualization platform Domo. The
consultancy follows the lead of agency competitors Travel and Transport, Omega World
Travel, Carlson Wagonlit Travel and American Express Global Business Travel in
bringing enhanced data platforms to market.
Former UBS travel analytics lead for the Americas Lexi
Honohan joined Advito just under a year ago as senior director of intelligence and
analytics. She will lead the practice. Honohan said that even with other
agency-connected tools in the market, "we still saw a gap that needed to
be filled" in terms of getting more sophisticated business intelligence
tools into the hands of travel managers.
Operating the practice under the Advito consultancy arm is one
differentiator, Honohan said, particularly when it comes to the focus on
multi-source data integration. She called out Amex GBT's Premier Insights,
which only integrates travel management company and corporate card data—and only if that corporate
card is American Express. GBT has talked for more than 18 months about potential future
integration with Mastercard and Visa, but nothing
has yet come to market. The company also has said expense data integration is
on the way.
Proprietary platforms like CWT's Analytiqs and Omega World
Travel's Omegalytics have shown some range for multi-source data integration,
but mostly traditional agency, card and expense. Omegalytics brings in ARC data. Travel
and Transport's source-agnostic Data Visualization Intelligence spinoff
is more akin to Advito's strategy in that it looks to digest both travel
data and non-travel data to produce insights to drive business objectives, not
just to manage travel spend and compliance.
Honohan said Advito chose to partner with Domo largely
because of its 200-plus existing application programming interfaces that include
important players like Cvent, Salesforce and other finance and HR sources and
because the platform's user interface offers an intuitive experience for
clients. Advito brings additional third-party data to the table, including
market rates, on-time performance tracker FlightStats, hotel availability, quality
services index data, rate shopping, traveler sentiment data and public information
like weather.
"We will take that data and link it to other areas in
the organization," said Honohan. "We will help organizations look at
how travel influences sales, how travel influences human resources issues or
tax implications. We want to work with companies to drive that value and have those
conversations with their C-level executives and business stakeholders."
That may be a more advanced conversation than many companies
are able to have right now, but Advito wants to push in that direction.
"Every organization is different; their travel program maturity levels are
different and so are their objectives," said Honohan.
Travel managers need better data to support more fundamental
responsibilities like supplier negotiations and management, and Honohan is on
board. "We want to change those supplier conversations and the
sourcing cycle for the travel manager," she said. "Every organization
that goes to the negotiating table has been reliant on supplier data [to show
market share or volume commitments]. Wouldn't it be great to have that
conversation but [be able to say to the supplier], 'Yes, but you canceled your
flights in that market 50 percent of the time,' or, 'Our travelers know that when
there are weather issues, you will cancel, so they book away,' or that '70
percent of the time, our hotel rates were not available in our prime markets.'"
Honohan said travel managers want to get to the "why"
behind spend patterns and not just continue to look at numbers. "You can't
get there with a single-source data platform. There's no one source of truth
for travel insights. Advito wants to provide a tool that is quick to implement
and easy to use, and we'll provide the consulting power behind it to make sure
our clients meet their objectives."