Best Of 2014: Advisory Board Co.'s Steven Mandelbaum Is BTN's Travel Manager Of The Year

"We are building our own expense tool," Steven Mandelbaum said during a recent phone conversation. "It won't be oriented around expense reports but around line items."

And so it is, yet another ambitious, perhaps audacious, project for The Advisory Board Co. vice president of business solutions and BTN's 2014 Travel Manager of the Year.

A rare blend of travel manager and IT specialist, Mandelbaum is a do-it-yourselfer who takes things apart only to put them back together in new and unusual ways. In the past year he constructed a unique company-branded loyalty program—integrated with the corporate card and booking tool—to track and reward traveler compliance. It could be called gamification, but as with many things he tackles, it has some twists.

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Hear Steven Mandelbaum in his own words:

He's also blended travel management expertise with IT know-how to build his own post-booking airfare audit tool. Most companies settle for something already on the market, but Mandelbaum constructed something a little more tailored.

He also takes apart travel policies, only to reassemble them in new forms. His advance-purchase airfare policy, initiated this past year, bucks the conventional view that booking further out always drives savings. He also has deployed a customized corporate payment program and reconfigured agency services to assist cardholders.

If those initiatives weren't enough to occupy him during the past year, Mandelbaum also oversaw the introduction of a new booking tool in nuTravel and a new travel agency in Balboa Travel Management.

Then there's the upcoming expense tool, another DIY tool in Mandelbaum's growing portfolio.

His path to travel management was somewhat accidental. "I came to travel by way of technology," he said. "I'm basically a technologist who had an interest in travel." In fact, Mandelbaum joined the global research, consulting and tech firm "as a technology guy," he said, focused on internal business systems. "I started doing that, then started getting into little pieces of finance operations, negotiating contracts, a little bit of procurement, a bit of travel."

Eventually he took over the travel program, previously only lightly managed and largely outsourced to an agency.

Building Loyalty

A key achievement in the past year that melds skill sets in information technology, travel management and finance is the deployment of an internal loyalty program to track and reward travelers.

The company previously had sponsored rewards via its card provider, but Mandelbaum saw "an opportunity to bring it in-house," he said last year.

What came off the shelf didn't do this: When travelers make in-policy purchasing decisions, they accrue points. Compliant flight bookings are rewarded through a mileage-based accrual system, and hotel points are accrued based on "a flat amount per night—assuming it's compliant within the rate limits," Mandelbaum said last year as part of a Travel Procurement report. Before employees can bank those points, they must file T&E expenses in a timely manner.

And the incentives are real—no badges or gold stars here. Points are tallied and can be redeemed for purchases through Amazon or converted into cash and steered toward a few company-sponsored charities. More interestingly, points also can be used for authorizations to file otherwise-unsanctioned corporate travel expenses.

Mandelbaum called those "travel enhancers," noting that once enough points are accrued, travelers could, for example, upgrade to first class or a hotel suite when otherwise not permitted. Travelers can use those enhancers as they see fit, "so long as it is reasonably related to business travel," he said.

Of course, the system—with all of its moving parts—took quite a bit of building. It involves a web of data feeds from the company's travel agency, expense system and corporate card to track traveler compliance. Mandelbaum also used open-source code to build a system that tallies points and converts them into currency. He also structured an internal e-commerce site housed on the company intranet, which includes an application programming interface to Amazon, through which travelers can view point balances and redeem rewards.

Casting A Net For Fare Savings

"This is one of my favorite things to do in the morning, but most days it spikes my blood pressure," Mandelbaum said as he perused a daily report generated by another tool he developed, the "lower airfare finder." The homegrown system examines employee booking data and within the 24-hour void window searches for less costly alternatives. It sounds like Yapta or some other mid-office price-assurance tool, but Mandelbaum's homegrown solution casts a bigger net.

While Yapta looks for lower fares on the same flight booked by the traveler, Mandelbaum's post-audit software searches other carriers and even explores options that could introduce a connection, so long as it meets arrival- and departure-time thresholds: "an hour before departure and that arrive up to an hour after your scheduled arrival time," he said.

In its current iteration, "We don't push it out to travelers, but we monitor. We use it as an audit tool." Mandelbaum plans to automate traveler alerts when savings opportunities reach a certain level.

For now, "If it's really high, I will forward out to the traveler and say, 'Can you take this?' " he said. They are not required to, but often they do.

Mandelbaum also was an early adopter of tripBam, which conducts post-booking searches of hotels  near the one reserved. It's a companion tool to his low-fare finder.

"I've become less interested over time in trapping people in the booking tool," he said. "You want people to book in your system—I'm not a fan of open booking—but use that as a lead to go after afterwards. Run it through the tools."

Bucking Booking Conventions

The conventional wisdom of airfare buying is that the closer to the date of travel you book, the more the fare will cost. It's generally true and has given rise to widespread advance-purchase policies. Though Mandelbaum's company does have a longstanding seven-day advance purchase requirement, there are plenty of exceptions and business demands that require bookings closer to departure.

But, closer in is not always more expensive—at least within a week of departure. On average, based on Advisory Board booking data, fares spiked between four and six days, but came down within three days.

Mandelbaum's solution: An advance-purchase policy that prohibits bookings in the four-to-six day range and implores travelers to book closer to the day of departure when traveling within the week.

Mandelbaum acknowledged traveler pushback.

"What they're afraid of is when I get within three days, there won't be a seat on that flight—I can't get there. There are more alternatives than travelers may acknowledge. My argument is, you don't have to get there on that flight. You have to get there within an hour," he said, referring to his low-fare finder.

Even so, Mandelbaum has been cognizant of such concerns, accepting some exceptions. He even plans to tweak the policy to apply only to "certain areas of the business," emphasizing that "part of this experimentation is getting it right."

Reconfiguring Card, TMC Support

As part of Advisory Board's switch from Travel Leaders to Balboa, Mandelbaum this summer shifted power to travel agents to administer aspects of the corporate card program. Now, corporate cards issued by the company include the agency phone number on the back. If a card is declined or an override is required to make a purchase, travelers can call dedicated travel agents—not the bank—for assistance.

"We are marrying travel agency and card support together, so the front line of card support will be the agency," he said prior to the launch of the program. "The agency has tools to do some investigations and overrides and give us that second-tier support, which is no different than what a bank would do today. We're trying to really centralize everything so we don't have to say, 'For this problem, call this vendor; for that, call that vendor.' "

Eventually, Mandelbaum wants the agency to send to the bank a weekly report of travelers embarking on international trips, so such notices are included on card accounts.

That is just one feature of a unique card program. The Advisory Board in the past year introduced a new declining-balance credit card, with chip-and-PIN technology, provided by payment company Comdata. It is configured as company bill/company pay on the MasterCard network.

"It's like a gift card," he said last year. "We've written code that does the math and we're replenishing it. It operates [similarly] like a prepaid card—except it's not; it's a credit card. And as people submit expenses, we will add [funds] back in." Among its benefits, the new program encourages the prompt filing of expenses since balances are refreshed upon submission.

Among other changes to the core program, the company late last year shifted its preferred booking tool to NuTravel from Deem (formerly known as Rearden Commerce).

With all the changes thrown at travelers, Mandelbaum has worked to ease transition. For example, one Deem feature appreciated by travelers was calendar integration. Not included as a core feature of the new tool, Mandelbaum rebuilt the concept. "I don't know how much is novel, but when people make a reservation it pushes to us via web services. We pull down the PNR and then we go and update their Outlook calendar." That means hotel check-in, flight arrival and departure and rental car pickup and drop-off times automatically are loaded onto the traveler's calendar thanks to some integration work by Mandelbaum.

Rethinking Expense Reporting

Not all of Mandelbaum's solutions require an IT investment. For example, he launched a pilot program with some of the company's most frequent travelers to ease the expense-reporting process. "We have someone whose job it is—called the expense concierge—to complete expense reports for people. They take the transactions, they classify them and get the report into draft mode. Then, they let you know that you need to submit it. After that, you review it and submit it."

In the early stages with about 40 road warriors, "We'll eventually scale it up."

Indeed, Mandelbaum's next major project involves rethinking the entire expense process. In the very early stages, Mandelbaum envisions doing away with expense reports, creating instead a transaction-oriented system in which line items are submitted when ready. The solution will focus on centralized auditing.

It's not the only ambitious project on Mandelbaum's horizon. "The endgame for us is to bring this all around to the full experience," he said. "Travel is a component of the larger enterprise and it's a vehicle for what we do." Upcoming projects, including a new "social intranet" and employee mobility tools, will introduce a "broader context of communications and collaboration."

This report originally appeared in the Aug. 25, 2014, edition of Business Travel News.