Data management and payment company Grasp Technologies has
upgraded the user interface of its GraspData business intelligence and
reporting platform so users can more easily view data visuals on both desktop
and mobile devices, Grasp Technologies vice president and chief sales officer
Dave Lukas told BTN.
While Grasp added many "little things that add up to
big advantages," Lukas said, one prominent change is a revamped dashboard,
which now better displays maps and other graphics, and makes it easier to navigate
through data. For example, users previously had to scroll down and up through
different data sections, but Grasp now separates different sections into tabs,
making it easier for people to toggle between sections or reports, Lukas explained.
Additionally, when users now hover over a sample report, a
larger visual of it automatically pops up, then disappears when they hover off.
Previously, users had to click on it and close out of it, which Lukas said was inefficient,
especially on mobile.
Users now can "stitch" reports together, instead
of running and downloading individual reports and then putting them together
themselves, which Lukas said is a "nightmare" to do.
Map Views
In the second quarter, Grasp plans to add two new map views
to GraspData. One complements its existing Where Are My Travelers travel-tracking
solution, which lets travel managers download reports detailing travelers' locations
based on booked flight data, a "duty-of-care light" solution, Lukas said,
which is part of Grasp's standard offering. With the planned new view, travel
managers would have a more detailed visualization.
"It's a mapping system where [a travel manager] can see
where dangers are popping up, like a hurricane, and see who's in its path or
will be traveling in the path and see what they can do now," Lukas said.
The solution, Lukas said, does not replace the services of
travel risk management providers like iJet or International SOS, which can
immediately reach out, track or extract travelers from dangerous situations. Grasp
does work with them, however, Lukas said.
Grasp's planned Hotel Mapping Dashboard would display all
hotels where travelers have stayed based on booked hotel data. Travel managers could
also create their own geographical regions. "It's pretty dynamic,"
Lukas said.
Additionally, and for a fee, users can upload their hotel contracts
to highlight travelers staying at nonpreferred hotels. For example, a travel
manager could see that in a particular city 10 travelers are staying at a
nonpreferred hotel within a mile of a preferred hotel, Lukas explained.
"It allows [users] to drill and analyze to see what's
going on there," Lukas said. "Hotels are one of the last places where
real savings exist, but [it's] one of the hardest places to manage."
Migrating to the Cloud
For the past few months, Grasp has been developing a
separate, cloud-based data management solution on both Amazon Web Services and
Microsoft Azure that it hopes to release by late 2019, Lukas said.
"In those [cloud] environments, it's much easier to
take advantage of what's happening in AI and machine learning, and with our
growth, we can scale better in those environments," Lukas said. "It
will be a separate and holistically different solution from GraspData … [which]
will stand alone as a separate product."
The solution will more likely end up on Microsoft Azure and
incorporate other services and modules, Lukas said.
Virtual Travel Manager
Grasp also is working on the idea of a "virtual travel manager"
that would use machine learning and artificial intelligence to create a
proactive alert system. "Imagine a system that is understanding your moves
within the system, what you're doing and what's important to you," Lukas
said. "It knows you go to certain reports all the time, so it starts to look
for other [similar] data scenarios and points out where there might be savings opportunities
you're not seeing."
GraspPay
Grasp expects to announce soon more partners for its no-fee
single-use virtual card solution, Lukas said. Grasp has exclusively partnered
with Wex since launching the product in 2015.
Within the first quarter, Lukas said GraspPay would expand
to include flights not booked through a global distribution system.