Special Report: Corporate Payment/Expense Reporting--Rosenbluth Merging Corp. Card Data With Travel Data

Rosenbluth International this month is putting the final touches on a new capability—expected to be available early next year—that will provide clients with a more comprehensive scope of travel spend by merging credit card data and agency-booked travel data.

The initiative—the first such program offered by a travel agency for multiple charge cards—is an extension of Rosenbluth's card reconciliation program, wherein the agency reconciles centrally billed corporate card transactions against agency-booked air and rail transactions, said Rosenbluth chief technology and solutions officer John Dabek.

While charge card reconciliation is a common service offered by many agencies, Dabek said that no other agency has been able to merge the complete set of booked travel data with the data from any corporate card, which is the focus of the program.

Such third-party data aggregators as Hi-Mark Software and TRX Inc. have been providing a similar level of data for years, and American Express has the capability to provide travel data and card data for clients who use both the Amex agency and corporate card, according to consultant Earl Foster of Partnership Travel. "It's pretty innovative for an agency to start doing this," Foster added. "In other words, they're saying they can compete with the third- party data aggregators."

American Express, the only dual provider of both corporate travel agency and corporate card services, offers the merged data for clients who use both of its offerings, which comprises the majority of Amex agency clients, said Yvonne Schneider, American Express vice president and general manager of global product development.

"We merge that information for central bills and, particularly, we've been merging the card information with the travel information for a number of years, because that is the reconciliation tool that we offer," Schneider said.

Hi-Mark Software has played a significant role in helping Rosenbluth roll out the data consolidation program. Earlier this year, Hi-Mark helped Rosenbluth develop the iVISION Web reporting platform, through which the enhanced data will be reported.

"We have partnered with Hi-Mark on the iVISION platform," Dabek acknowledged. "There are some proprietary elements, reporting templates and some database elements, but we're also working with them on the credit card integration as well."

Rosenbluth will generate the enhanced data through its iVISION Web reporting platform, co-developed earlier this year with Atlanta-based Hi-Mark.

"One of the biggest obstacles is being able to capture detailed hotel data," Dabek said. "We're working with our clients and the major hotel chains to push them along in providing this kind of data. There's value even without that, but we have to make sure the systems are in place before hotels get to the point where they have 80 percent or 90 percent compliance with the folio data."

The merging of booked data with card data helps cut out the possibility of leakage, allowing managers to see a broader picture of what is booked through the agency and what actually is spent.

"We have the capability of extracting information out of the combined set of data, and I view it as filling in the blanks," Dabek said. "There are a number of clients who today—and this is fairly common—book around the system. And we will be able to take the agency travel data as well as take the data that was booked around."

Clients who do not book through the agency and "book around the system" but still use their corporate card to cover the expense will be represented by the end-data. These bookings include alternative air, hotel and car rental inventory sources.

Foster said the number of clients who book outside the agency could be as high as 20 percent and represent a percentage of business from which managers are missing data. This recovered data serves as both a check on traveler compliance and a more comprehensive database for vendor negotiations.