KPI Toolkit for Travel Managers

source: epicgraphic.com

Looking for some fresh thinking on the travel KPI front?  Help is at hand!

Four of us took up Paul Tilstone‘s challenge to create a set of Key Performance Indicators for travel category managers.  Nicolas Borel, Torsten Kriedt, James Westgarth and I have been working on this project for quite a few months now.

We settled on twenty-one KPIs, complete with definitions and likely data sources.  Of course, you can’t have a KPI Toolkit without an Excel file, right?  So we designed an easy self-scoring worksheet that allows you to customize

Following Gillespie’s Guide to Travel+Procurement?

What a broad set of travel topics we’ve been discussing here: Gamification, verbal translation, direct connections, data reporting, self-booking breakthroughs, innovation barriers, supplier pricing….I love it.

If you’re a follower of this blog, thank you!  And if you’ve contributed to the conversations here, an even bigger thank you!

Here’s the ask:  If you like this blog, please recommend it your colleagues. A bigger base means even better conversations, so we’ll all benefit.

Folks can follow for free here.  It’s good for about 2-4 articles a month, depending on what catches my eye.  Thank you for helping me grow this audience.

Here’s a handy recap of the most popular articles from the last year or so:

ProcureApp’s Clever Compliance Tool

Disclosure: I’ve served  ProcureApp as an unpaid advisor.

Procurement folks hate undiscounted spend.  They’ll love ProcureApp.  Why? Because it detects when a buyer (think traveler) has wandered onto a non-approved supplier’s website. When that happens, a friendly message pops up.

“Pardon me, old chap.  Couldn’t help noticing that you’re on Brand.com’s site.  Not really an approved supplier, are they?  Tsk, tsk. Why don’t we take a nice stroll over to our approved travel site, and do our shopping and booking over there, shall we?”

Beautiful.  A timely message displayed to a traveler at a critical step in the path of non-compliance. Complete with a link to the preferred site.

Building the HP Travel Program: Key Openings

HP has a long-time big league reputation in travel management circles.  Beyond size, it has leveraged some very bright minds to deliver advances in many aspects of managing corporate travel programs.  Good news for a few of you dear readers…for HP is hiring!

Jeff Kurn, one of HP’s travel management rock stars and good friend, is looking to fill these four spots on his new Travel Strategy and Consulting team.  All positions are virtual; no relo required.

Travel Business Consultant (684829): Provide trusted-advisor travel consulting to HP’s businesses and finance organizations.  The Business Consultant

“Book It” Will Spark Travel Value Engines

Book It, the oh-so-clever service from Short’s Travel, is a game changer.

Book It makes the “Shop anywhere, but book it here” concept practical for corporate travelers.

Travelers can use any website to find an itinerary and fare they like, then send that flight info to Short’s via e-mail.

The Book It system looks up the traveler’s corporate profile, presents relevant travel policies, applies the corporate discount, and with 3 clicks from the traveler, books the flight.

This “Shop anywhere, but book it here” model is incredibly powerful.  It eliminates

Short’s Book It: A Brilliant Booking Breakthrough

Short’s Travel, arguably the most innovative TMC in North America, has done it again*.

Book It** allows a corporate traveler to search for airfares on any site, then e-mail the selected flight info to Short’s for booking and en-route servicing. Completely automated. Fast results.  Pure genius.

Why pure genius?  Because, according to
David LeCompte, Short’s president, some two-thirds of corporate travelers are shopping for their airfares on non-corporate websites anyway. Once they find a good flight, they have to re-enter the details into their corporate tool.  Newsflash – not every traveler bothers with that last step.

Then there’s the small problem that consumer OTAs are

Travel Search Innovation – the Next Breakthrough

My, what a contrast in travel innovation. The first two presenters at today’s PhoCusWright Travel Innovation Summit were Hipmunk and Evature. Both focus on simplifying the travel search process. Pay attention to the implications for corporate travel.

Hipmunk is focusing on de-cluttering the results of a traditional travel search.  It integrates air and Amtrak rail options into flight searches, and combines hotels with AirBnB results. Hotels are presented with geo-heat maps to highlight shopping, dining and vice (really). Beautifully done.

Evature says hooey on traditional travel search – too many point and clicks, radio buttons, sliders, etc.  Solution?  Semantic search, aka free (unformatted) text.  ”Summer beach vacation for about $600 per person”  Think about how time-consuming that search is in today’s OTA world.  Same for business – typing  ”Day trip to Chicago next Tuesday” has to be easier than getting those parameters into a self-booking tool.  And yes, Evature accepts speech, just like Siri.

So Hipmunk is simplifying the structured travel search process, while Evature is handling the complexity of simple travel searches. A fascinating contrast in travel innovation.  Who will win?

My prediction: Free text/free speech trumps structured search.  Speaking is easier than typing, especially in a mobile world.  Imagine a corporate booking tool that uses Evature or Siri-based search capability.  That will be a true next-generation breakthrough in the self-booking space.

I wonder who will be the first to bring speech-based search to the corporate travel market?

(Update: The day after this post, Evature was named as the grand winner by judges at the Travel Innovation Summit)

Watch the full set of travel innovation presentations by registering for free here: http://pcwi.phocuswright.com/PC11-online-ticket.html\

Want articles like these delivered to you by e-mail?  Sign up here.  It’s free, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Revolution Is In The Air

Democracy blooming in the Middle East.  Leaderless revolutionaries occupying Wall Street. Student athletes organizing to get paid. Presidential candidates wanting to overthrow the U.S. Tax Code.

Do you see the implications for managed travel?

It’s all about power from the bottom up. Compliance gets you nowhere.  Stop questioning the status quo and do something dramatic.

De-Commoditizing Airlines – A Long Road Ahead

Last week in Beijing I made the case for de-commoditizing the airlines.  Even though it was a friendly audience at the CASMA Fall Global Conference, there was some sharp discussion during Q&A.  Fair enough, as I skewered American’s handling of its Direct Connect value prop to the business travel community.  Here are the key points:

Does Distribution Really Matter? Can it Differentiate Airline Products?

Absolutely.  Think about how the endpoint of the distribution chain looks today.  You still see flight times, carrier logos and prices.  Pretty commodity-like stuff, that.  From green screen GDS terminals to mobile booking displays,  all you see is a long list of racked-and-stacked flight options.

It’s the equivalent of shopping in the paper towel aisle at WalMart. Price dominates.

Enter Curation, Visualization and Personalization

Direct Connect By Google – Oh Yes

It’s a simple formula. Google Flight Search + Airlines’ Hunger for Direct Connect = Trouble for GDSs.

You may think Google Flight Search is just another meta search tool.  I think it is a major step in a campaign to build direct connections between airlines and travelers. Google Flight Search is GDS Bypass personified.

Google sees the GDSs as fortresses, producing hundreds of millions of captive airline searches beyond the reach of any search engine. Searches that need to be freed. Searches that should have the right to be completed directly with the supplier. Searches that in their basic form can be served up quite nicely with Google Flight Search.

But the campaign is far from over.  Airline products are