Op-Ed: Payment Tech Tools Enhance Cost Mgmt.

New technologies are helping corporate executives enhance the experience for travelers while tightening travel budgets, even as costs rise and other industry challenges abound.

Travel executives require more data than they have ever needed before. Consequently, many travel managers are looking to use card products not only as payment tools to streamline the accounts payable process, but also to leverage the increasing amount of data that now can be captured on the card account. It's through the integration of this data that companies can exploit end-to-end solutions to fully optimize travel programs. Companies scrutinize and analyze data to understand spend with each of their vendors. This information then serves as the basis to negotiate pricing and, hence, to contain costs.

Data analysis has even become powerful enough to track and address policy compliance issues—in some cases, to do so in real time, when noncompliance can be addressed proactively.

One of the most exciting examples of this data integration is hotel e-folio, an electronic version of the breakdown of hotel spend into such categories as mini bar, room service, parking fees and business center. Charges are itemized and prepopulated by the corporate card provider in the corporation's expense reporting tool.

For the travel manager, e-folio facilitates rate negotiation and cost containment. It holds great potential to boost hotel policy compliance, currently the lowest of the various travel categories, according to Business Travel News' benchmarks of the 100 largest U.S. corporate travel buyers. Meanwhile, for travelers, prepopulated expense reports save valuable time and relieve one of the perpetual headaches of travel.

Today's solutions integrate corporate card data into expense management systems from several vendors. As a result, prepopulated transaction data streamline the expense reconciliation and approval process, eliminating the hours it can take to review and process expense reports and to consolidate reports on vendor purchases and fraud activity.

Travel managers today don't just want more data. They want access to it any time, from anywhere—to drive insights through use with benchmarking tools. Web-based solutions allow companies to access all card program data online. They allow cardholders to access their transactions within 24 hours after purchase to create expense reports. And they allow managers to view and approve cardholder purchases. These solutions include the in-depth monitoring and analysis that managers need, and they make it easier to integrate data into accounting systems.

As part of an effort to promote employee security and minimize corporate risk, today's solutions provide up-to-date transaction information that can be integrated with security solutions and accessed by managers 24/7.

All of these solutions are available today from industry-leading providers, and more solutions are in the process of becoming available.

Instead of checking into a hotel, imagine "tapping" into it with a card, mobile phone or key fob. Business travelers soon will be able to register at the front desk by tapping their mobile phone on a pad. The phone provides the traveler's corporate card and other data to the hotel and receives the room number in exchange. The phone then becomes the traveler's hotel key—just tap the door to enter.

Such solutions promise to deliver a combination of convenience and business insight that will help usher in new levels of cost containment, policy compliance—and enhanced service for business travelers.

MasterCard Worldwide executive vice president of U.S. business development Bill Mathis.