ConTgo, the company best known for facilitating two-way mobile communications between companies and their travelers, is expanding beyond its core security management role into policy compliance management. The new version of its Mobile Travel Assistant tool, released this month, links to a travel data warehouse and alerts companies to overpriced, noncompliant travel bookings, according to chief executive Johnny Thorsen.
ConTgo every four hours takes booking data feeds from clients' global distribution systems and travel management companies for tracking purposes, and now is using the same passenger name record information to view expenditures. "Other companies use different tools for functions such as security or procurement," Thorsen said. "In the conTgo environment, we only have one set of data. The PNR is used for many different purposes."
Thorsen claimed that the conTgo data warehouse handles data generated at point of booking rather than at point of ticketing, allowing noncompliant booking behavior to be detected at an early stage. The next release of Mobile Travel Assistant--scheduled for July and currently in pilot with a small number of clients--will let managers analyze how closely reservations are complying with corporate policy.
"It typically takes a Fortune500 company two to six weeks to get this level of data, by which time it has zero value for them," said Thorsen. "It is very strange that people are so focused on lost savings, which are always looking backwards. They are looking at things that weren't done correctly, so they are highlighting failure. I believe this is one of the reasons chief financial officers have never been interested in travel. If you can calculate the likely loss of savings next week before it happens, then you can go to the CFO and say 'I could save you $100,000 next week. Will you let me?' I would like to see the CFO who could ignore that kind of saving for three weeks."
Examples of the reports conTgo could generate include setting targets for the number of bookings in which the average booked fare is a fixed percentage higher than on the same route 12 months prior, or exceeds a simple price cap. If the target number of overpriced bookings is exceeded, Thorsen said MTA then can be used to ask employees who have exceeded the limits to justify their spending. As a further refinement, parameters could be set to communicate only to travelers whose tickets are sufficiently flexible to allow changes.
Although this is conTgo's first foray into strategic travel management, MTA can automatically text travelers when they land at selected airports to remind them that their corporate policy stipulates that they transfer downtown by rail, not taxi. Thorsen said the data warehouse is being made available to direct corporate clients and to conTgo's agency and GDS resellers.
Other features in the new version of MTA include a social networking tool called MTA Share, aimed at allowing a company's travelers to share information with colleagues in the same location. The Share facility is set so that messages only can be sent or received by travelers in the same airport location or with flights arriving within two hours or departing within four hours. It is intended to allow travelers to communicate on issues such as disruptions or transport-sharing options.
The article originally was published in Business Travel News.