KPI dashboards are vital tools for optimising travel programmes – but many in the industry say it’s time to take them to the next level. Mark Frary reports
THEY SAY THAT A PICTURE is worth a thousand words. This truism actually has some scientific veracity – research by 3M, the company behind Post-it notes, found that people comprehend images 60,000 times faster than text.
This is perhaps why travel management dashboards have become so popular. These visual representations of key performance indicators (KPIs) – such as average spend per transaction, average advance booking time and supplier market share – are becoming the principal way that many companies manage their travel programmes. Travel buyers know that dials, sliders and infographics can tell them the health, or otherwise, of their programme at a glance.
Julian Munsey is head of strategic business development at Hillgate Travel, which provides portals to its corporate clients. He says: “Dashboards have become important because people want the information at their fingertips. Gone are the days when you can send over a monthly reporting package. Senior management want numbers and they need them quickly. You can’t say to them that they have to wait until next month to get them.”
Munsey says dashboards have been used most widely “in any industry where it is a requirement to be able to track against job number or cost centres” – notably in financial services and the services sector in general, partly because of the cost-centre requirements in those areas.
Back in 2005, French technology provider Traveldoo was one of the first to introduce dashboards. Julian Mills, UK director at Traveldoo, says: “We introduced travel management dashboards in 2005 featuring gauges to measure the achievement of policy compliance, online adoption rate and corporate fare usage objectives. It also included key indicators measuring booking volumes by type of service [air, rail, hotel nights and car rental days], top-five city pairs and top-five hotel destinations.”
ATPI has just launched a new dashboard reporting tool, which includes live feeds such as airport disruption and weather reports, as well as management information on spend, suppliers, lost savings, advance booking patterns, flexible ticket use and traveller tracking. The dashboard can be customised so that it has the look and feel of the client’s own website.
Adam Knights, ATPI’s group sales and marketing director, says: “The look and layout of the new dashboard is totally customisable to the user’s preference with a single sign-on so it can be easily tailored to match the branding of businesses, and the tools can be selected to meet the needs of each user.
Development of ATPI’s dashboard is ongoing. Knights says: “A new tool that we will be adding to our dashboard in the near future is Discovery Lite. This application is a web-based interface focused on invoicing data, which allows clients and travellers to keep track of their business travel spend quickly and efficiently. Our overall aim is to continue developing a robust and secure system for data exchange which follows our clients’ established protocols.”
CUSTOMISATION
So you have your dashboard – what should go on it? Most are customisable and can show a range of indicators. The UBS case study shows some of those that are in use in practice.
Adam Knights at ATPI says KPIs have remained broadly consistent over the years. “Measuring service, performance and savings is always the priority but, as new tools become available, items like online adoption become part of the KPIs,” he says. “There is always the question of whether TMCs can affect the rate of online adoption, but with one easy-to-use dashboard, issues such as traveller tracking, complaints and commendations can easily be managed online. By tracking these indicators accurately and with consistency, our performance can be measured with confidence.”
Traveldoo is developing its dashboards, too. Julian Mills says: “We are working on expense management dashboards. They will feature a series of KPIs to monitor T&E (travel and entertainment) spend, budget, reporting activity and compliance. They also help measure process efficiency by looking at claim processing times.”
Hillgate’s Munsey says that anything that can help with cost control is proving popular as a KPI – how far trips are booked in advance, out-of-policy reporting and online-compliance reporting. “We are not just looking at top routes any more,” he says. “Having pre-trip insight has immense value. Historically, KPIs were in place to measure what clients had done – now it is about what they are going to do.”
Munsey says that linking the reason for a business trip and the amount of time in advance a trip has been booked is proving useful, too. “If we look at a list of trips that have been booked, and the reason for travel is to attend a conference but it has only been booked four days in advance, then maybe you should look into that.”
He also believes travel KPIs should go beyond things such as online booking compliance and advance purchase, and look more at wider business objectives. “Very often KPIs were based around success – now they are more about what more could we be doing, and how else can we use information provided,” he says. “If a sales person is spending £500 on a ticket and accommodation, but winning an order for £50,000, there is logic to the outlay – but quite how we would be able to get that information about the end order, I don’t know.”
The Data Exchange’s Susan Hopley agrees. She says: “Travel is a vital component of sales and customer service, and there are so many ways a competent travel manager can contribute to this effort to support the success of the company. The next generation of dashboards has to include more elements of the profit-and-loss. Travel managers are going to have to be more outwardly focused and market aware.”
One attempt to link business travel indicators with the wider world is the ACTE Index, launched by the Association of Corporate Travel Executives in 2011. Munsey says of the Index: “I do think that being able to provide the travel community with broader insight into external trends affecting T&E expenditure holds immense value. If the average ticket price has risen, you need to provide insight into why that has happened. Broader integration can only be beneficial.”
He adds a note of caution. “Having a dashboard is one thing, but getting the data in the first place is different. We are still finding customers who are not getting any quality data. It is the key to anyone’s travel programme.”
CHANGING TECHNOLOGY
The Data Exchange’s Hopley believes that the days of expensive proprietary data reporting tools are numbered, and that free and open-source alternatives, such as Tableau Public and Wolfram Alpha, will come to the fore in the next few years. “Changing technology is enabling an entirely different approach to managing data, and companies risk getting left behind,” she says. Hopley believes that today’s dashboards are already worryingly outdated. “The way of doing reporting today is like riding a horse-and-cart next to a Pendolino – I really believe that.”
The problem, she suggests, is that existing dashboards exist in a silo of travel management information with few, if any, links to the wider world. Weaving travel management information together with external data will be the key in the future.
“In the past it was a case of: he who has the most data and doesn’t share it is the winner,” she says. “Nowadays, the algorithm has changed. He who goes for smart data rather than big data, and who understands how to use it, will be the winner.”
Things are changing, though, and predictive technology is starting to emerge that weaves together data from a range of sources and allow companies to predict forward budgets with some accuracy. HRG and KDS are among the companies working in this area.
“People want more for less, and they want things faster,” says Hillgate’s Munsey. He also believes, like Hopley, that the future is about bringing together data sources from outside.
“Exchange of data is being made easier,” he says. “The availability of web services in a broader context is something that can be used to improve data flow and availability.”
Hopley believes the future is about smart, rather than big, data. She says: “Big data in and of itself is a waste of time. It has no relevance as a stand-alone. Smart data comes from big data, and it is the smart operatives who know what to get where, can quantify its value and can demonstrate a return-on-investment.”
HOW UBS USES DASHBOARDS
MARK CUSCHIERI, regional head of travel for the EMEA region for Swiss investment bank UBS, uses a dashboard created by a third-party data consolidator. He says: “We have spent considerable time and effort, and a significant level of stakeholder participation [developing it]. We rewrote and rebuilt our reporting suite in order to deliver global and regional dashboard reporting. It was no easy task by any means – however, the effort from the outset was significantly worthwhile.”
The dashboard is able to show a range of different key performance indicators graphically, as follows:
• Transactions/spend by traffic type (air, hotel, rail, ground transportation) by origin country
• Average transaction values
• Cost per mile (air)
• Top routes/vendors
• Top travellers
• Fare type by class
• Advance booking ratio/savings
• Achieved/lost opportunity
• Contract performance goals
• Policy compliance
• Trip purpose
• Online booking tool adoption
• Credit card leakage
Cuschieri believes dashboards complement, rather than replace, traditional travel management data suites. “Within the report audience, there are differing levels and requirements,” he says. “As a consequence, a selection of report categories and formats are required, one of which is a dashboard style. Graphical dashboards are an excellent format for quick performance reviews of our strategic KPIs. However, the importance of any data reporting is to ensure it is relevant to business needs.”
Cuschieri sees the value in dashboards in helping to convince management and business functions to change their behaviour – particularly if they are underperforming – but he believes dashboards on their own are not enough.
“The report cannot provide analysis behind travel trend changes and questions emanating from viewing the dashboard,” he says. “Therefore, subject matter expertise will always be required to provide additional detailed commentary, to add further value.”
The dashboard is already providing UBS with significant insight into its programme; however, Cuschieri is not resting on his laurels. “We believe we’ve got the right data-sets measured, but we’ll continue to review them to ensure they meet the needs of our programme. If our corporate strategic goals change, then this will certainly drive a further review. Ultimately, we believe the two are linked.”