The winners and most powerful players in an industry are no longer decided by their industrial might and the power needed to keep running the infrastructure. The balance has now shifted to the digital space: information, data and insight is now the lifeblood of many industries. It is the fuel which keeps areas such as business travel moving forward.
Much like oil, data in its raw form is crude, difficult to use and in many instances can actually slow down the time to market. In the travel industry, this is certainly the case — having access to reams and reams of data can make processes sluggish as people sift their way through information in order to find actionable intelligence. This data, as with oil, must be refined in order to provide actionable insight with the minimum of fuss, allowing TMCs and travel buyers to act quickly and efficiently.
Refining business travel
TMCs know this and have been trying to achieve these kinds of results for years. Almost all travel buyers and travel managers will have some tools and reports at their disposal to make sense of the vast quantities of traveller data that is available. And this will certainly give them some insight to which to react such as major trends in spending. The act of collecting and reporting this data can be seen as the drilling of the oil well: you have located the fuel and have started to work towards extracting its value through your tools and processes.
However, this data cannot be fully used without it being refined. One clear way to achieve this is by working within an ecosystem.
An ecosystem is made up of other companies — partners — that act as the refineries you need to better manage the raw data you have. Companies then use this data to power their specific offerings, ensuring that the maximum value is derived from the information. You mine the unrefined data, then a company — for example, one that specialises in finding the best deals on rail travel — uses this data to power their solution.
This ecosystem is, as the refinery for raw data, streamlining and acting on this information in a way that saves time, money and brain power for companies and individuals. The impact and importance that a successful ecosystem bring cannot be overstated and must be a key consideration.
Technology leads the way
Although a far cry from business travel, a clear example of a successful ecosystem is the way that Facebook operates in 2016, with a huge network of partners that act on Facebook's data. Websites, applications and games all connect back to Facebook through an individual's profile and critically do this in a way which gives actionable results rather than just more information to sift through.
If you want to link to a webpage on Facebook, then the social tools available through most sites allow this to be done with a click of a button. Similarly, many commenting features are tied back to Facebook and leaderboards for online games (for better or worse — I'm looking at you Candy Crush) again work intuitively due to being part of Facebook's ecosystem, whether they are on the main Facebook site or not. These highlight cases of Facebook's data being used to create results — the main hub of data being used for specific functions by specific parties within the ecosystem.
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Technological ecosystems help make sense of data ©venimo/iStock
Apple and its app store, radio stations and music services again work in this way, allowing the central Apple platform and devices to work seamlessly together whether people are watching content, listening to music or playing games. However, the strict "walled-garden" approach should serve as a warning for those ecosystems being set up, as this has often come under scrutiny by people who feel this is perhaps too restrictive. An ecosystem needs to be able to move with new advances in both ideas and organisations and in business travel this flexibility is vital for ensuring that disruptive technologies can be harnessed as refined through the network that has been set up.
But why is an ecosystem as important to travel buyers as an exceptional booking tool? The simple answer is that all of the low-hanging fruit has been picked. With the advancement in booking tool technology that is now available, companies must travel that extra mile to differentiate and bring something fresh, impactful and of high value to the business traveller.
Insights, a level of personalisation and various other perks are now seen as standard in the business travel industry. To become a leader in travel management businesses need to build an ecosystem that allows them to solve more complex problems and autonomously work with data without having to spend a great deal of time on these solutions.
Applying these lessons to business travel
Your TMC, online booking tool provider and/or expense management platform can provide the oil and their partners can use this in the specific areas where they have expertise to enable a new level of refinement and results.
AirRefund, which processes EU compensation for passengers on delayed and cancelled flights, is a classic example of a company that operates within this ecosystem. Their offering does not simply see traveller data available and informs the traveller that they are due compensation; it also proactively flags this, automatically processes the issue and ensures that the money gets back to you and your company's TMC without your having to dedicate any more time to this.
Similarly with a firm like TaxBack, rather than simply giving you the raw, unrefined data on your taxes and indicating what you might be owed, companies can, with a click of a button, get back the tax they are owed at the price of a small commission.
These slick, autonomous results represent the higher targets that travel managers now have to reach for in order to provide real value. The days of simply identifying a cheaper deal for travellers has long past. And innovation in this sector is set to grow — for example a button is now installed in some new Ford company cars that tracks how long the journey was and claims back the mileage on expenses.
Making your data work for you
It's clear that as the travel industry becomes more technologically advanced, the streamlining of data and its results will need to become similarly more sophisticated. Travel managers, business travellers and TMCs no longer have the time to chase down money or search for savings themselves — these need to be flagged and dealt with through an ecosystem of partners that can refine this information and use it to fuel their specialist capabilities. People don't want a guide anymore; they want a bounty hunter for their cash.
People involved in the business travel market are often looking for what booking tool they should be using — instead, the question they should be asking is "what ecosystem should I buy into?" The capabilities of a platform of businesses working together for a 360 degree travel service vastly outweigh those of a slick, stand-alone booking tool. You have your data and that is a great first step for helping your travellers. So now it's time to reframe the debate and turn that data into the best possible version of itself to drive through outcomes and solutions.