Egencia isn't the first travel business to announce the launch of a number of expense management products. Amadeus Cytric, KDS Neo and Concur all connect travel booking and expense management. And that's why this launch points to the future shape not just of Egencia but of travel and expense management.
Egencia's new 'expense management suite' has three components. The first — Egencia Open Sync — effectively enables the traveller to consolidate all receipts and credit card (whether personal or corporate) transactions into the corporate's expense system. Egencia Open Connect Platform offers different APIs to data and report management partners in related areas such as travel and expense, risk management and ERP (enterprise resource planning). The third element is straightforward travel and expense integration. This will initially be with its own affiliate Traveldoo but the release suggests this will be agnostic as it adds "other expense providers to follow".
The 'suite' is a means of implementing an end-to-end strategy to integrate travel and expenses.
We talk a lot about our home lives and work lives merging. Well, at home we're getting tired of looking on our phones or tablets for different apps for different devices so we're investing in smart home hubs to link them into one. The same is true at work.
As the trend for travellers researching and booking their own travel grows, so too does the need to find a mechanism to make the whole process as consolidated and user-friendly as possible to encourage uptake.
At the same time there is a rise in popularity of companies wanting a single IT platform which will enable and encourage inter-departmental data exchange.
It seems a long time ago that Amex GBT was part of a global financial services company that was at pains to keep its card business separate from its travel business. Ensuring that buyers and TMCs perceived the card business as totally independent was a positive selling point several years back because travel buying and management was one function, expenses were another. Travel management used to worry about what happened from the decision to travel until reconciliation; finance's concern was reconciliation and payment through to audit/ERP. And management information (MI) came from TMCs except for a handful of travel managers who employed data warehouses such as Susan Hopley's ISP.
Companies increasingly recognise the power of data in company strategy and management and want everything to be as comparable and comprehensive as possible. To get that data they need to make things as simple at the front end as possible and that's why 'end-to-end' which enjoyed a brief flurry of popularity at the beginning of the Noughties is making a comeback.
As travel management becomes less about booking a trip and more about managing the process of company travel, the future of TMCs is likely to be helping companies meet their objectives whatever they may be from maximising value for money, providing support for travellers or capturing the most relevant data — past or predictive.
It's not just about the transaction fee.