Travel management company Carlson Wagonlit Travel (CWT) has launched its analytics travel consolidator to help travel managers uncover “the hidden costs of business travel and off-channel spend”.
According to CWT, the web-based platform combines air, hotel and ground transport transactions booked through the company with credit card, expense and HR data.
The consolidation of data on a single platform with configurable dahsboards and reporting capabilities allows travel managers to identify missed savings opportunities and improve compliance besides putting them in a better position to negotiate with suppliers.
For example, the integrated data will reveal spending outside official channels such as flights and hotels booked on personal cards and poorly understood costs such as airline seat selection charges, meals, laundry and incidentals, as well as travellers who incurred them.
Lack of data has been cited as a factor by 64% of travel managers in a CWT-sponsored survey that hinders their ability to calculate the total cost of a trip. Furthermore, 73% of them struggled to reconcile differences in reports due to data formatting while 58% said they spend too much time reconciling and cleaning data.