Good, structured data is fundamental to running a managed travel programme, Tony Pilcher told the International Travel Partnership (ITP) conference in Tallinn, Estonia
Mr Pilcher, former head of global business travel management for HSBC and now a consultant with his company Pilcher Associates, said: "If you cannot measure something, how can you manage it?
"Data is fundamental - where are the corporates spending their money and who is spending it? It is the analysis of your data and Management Information reports that drives effective business decision making. Therefore the input of data must be consistent and structured."
But he told the 35 delegates from 13 countries attending the three-day event last week that they had to understand what their customers wanted from the data.
Representatives from four suppliers, Amadeus, Hotelzon, EventBidder and NetTrans also attended the conference to talk about their products.
The theme of the conference was “Managing the customer and beating the competition.”
"Corporates require consolidated data from pre-trip planning to post-trip payment so they can see where they are spending, who is spending it and what it costs," he said.
"What they want is total trip costs, including going from home to the airport, the cost of time in security and passport queues and how long it takes to collect luggage.
"More and more customers are saying 'We don't want to travel unless there is a return on the investment'. You have to show that the trip will give value to the company."
Mr Pilcher said the companies wanted live data which they could analyse down to transaction level.
They wanted it to be easy to use on a "flexible display system with graphics and drill-down capabilities."
They wanted controlled access to sensitive data and they wanted measurement of "all key strategic and operational elements."
Finally they wanted cost savings and cost reductions.
He said a company might find that an employee had travelled to Prague four times in the past four weeks. "Can you consolidate this? This is where you come in. There is no point in saying you have got to reduce costs if you don't understand the value you are giving."