Amex Deploys Tool To Drive Compliance

American Express Business Travel recently launched a pre-trip auditing tool that includes point-of-sale intervention, making the reporting process more efficient and effective and further boosts policy compliance, officials said

The Pre-Trip Auditor online tool uses 53 configurable options to push air, hotel, car, form of payment and cost of trip compliance. By driving travel policy and fiduciary compliance, Amex claims companies that move to an automated expense reporting process can yield an average savings of $102 per expense report, as well as the ability to decrease the average rate of booking policy noncompliance.

Used internally during the past year and tested on a multitude of Amex clients from a cross-section of industries, the Pre-Trip Auditor became fully available to U.S.-headquartered Amex clients in the first quarter of 2007, according to Jiten Bhalgat, senior practice manager for advisory services at Amex. The company plans an international rollout as it works to configure it to a multilingual platform by year-end.

The tool approves or decline trips, Bhalgat said. The system alerts employees when they are booking out of policy through e-mails and allows them to rebook their trip or have the system send along their reservation for approval.

While the full range of potential benefits still are unclear, some American Express clients see the tool as valuable in driving compliance rates upward. The rate should be around 80 percent, said Kevin Maguire, director of global travel for Austin, Texas-based Applied Materials.

"If you don't have that compliance rate, then you don't have a well-managed travel program," Maguire said.

Although the United Nations, an American Express client, uses in-house pre-trip compliance tools because of the complexity of its travel programs, Tom Hanley, chief of the travel unit, said that there are benefits to adding such a tool to existing services, such as driving compliance rates for preferred airfares, but that it can't do the whole job. "To rely exclusively on an automated tool may not get you to the level you want," Hanley said.

Others within the industry see an advanced pre-trip reporting tool as helping to keep travelers within policy. Steve Reynolds, vice president of technology solutions for Management Alternatives, said that automation can drive compliance rates up because "it establishes consistency whether you book online or offline."

However, there is a downside, Reynolds said, as pre-trip auditing can slow the booking process by becoming bogged down by the technology, which could "over-communicate" or even miscommunicate to employees.