American Express Global Client Group members gain more
in-depth reporting capabilities through Commercial Insights, a new reporting suite
within the card network's @ Work Reporting tool, global head of data strategy
and insights for Global Commercial Services Iwao Fusillo told BTN. Commercial
Insights is available free to Amex Global Client Group's more than 100
multinational corporations, which conduct business in more than 30 countries.
While @ Work Reporting offers standard reports with line
item detail, it's up to a company auditor to look through the reports to find unusual
spend patterns. Commercial Insights automatically flags unusual spending—for
example, if a corporate card is used at a retail establishment over the weekend
near the cardholder's home, or if it's used at a restaurant that's actually a
gambling establishment, Fusillo explained. Clients can work with Amex to
determine which managers see individual cardholder data.
"The average size of these programs have tens of
thousands of company cards in the hands of employees, which is very difficult
for a department [auditor] within a multinational company to constantly scan
for these things," he said. "[We] identify the cohorts of employees
and leave it to the company to action or investigate."
Additionally, Commercial Insights provides dashboards for
companies to benchmark their spend against similar companies by details like
specific routes, average cost per mile, specific booking timeframes and, for
hotel stays, average daily rates or weekday versus weekend stays. It also
suggests policy changes based on the data, such as mandating travel be booked
more than 21 days in advance. @ Work Reporting offers more general data, like
spend by air, hotel or car, as well as per carrier spend, and it is up to
managers to derive their own conclusions.
"The dashboards allow the client to simulate different
scenarios [to see] where they can save money. It's up to the client if they
actually want to change the policy or not … for example changing the booking
window for the proportion of air tickets that are [booked] within or outside
the seven days of flight, class of travel or direct versus indirect flights,"
Fusillo said.
Commercial Insights also integrates some of the
"largest providers" of expense management but only for a limited number
of clients, according to Fusillo. He declined to name the expense providers.
Fusillo said bringing in travel management company data is
"complex, but I do think it will be a future offering. Enough clients have
been asking for it."
To
develop the tool, 40 data scientists last year manually examined the client
transaction data of 12 clients, combined merchant location data and conducted Internet
searches to look for patterns. They kept a global database of questionable
merchants and added clients' questionable merchants, Fusillo explained. Amex
then developed algorithms to automate the data insights process. Fusillo will
continue to work with clients in a similar capacity to inform future releases
of Commercial Insights.