Having multiple travel management companies (TMCs) supporting an organization is common in today’s business sector, especially for those with a global presence. This fragmentation makes leveraging a travel program data aggregation and auditing solution mission-critical.
What Are TMCs (Travel Management Companies)?
TMCs, travel management companies, are companies that help manage various businesses with their travel programs and eliminate potential hassles with bookings and overspending on lodging and airfare for employees.
There can be key scenarios that may result in an organization having multiple TMCs. They include:
- Mergers and acquisitions - These lead to overlap within the supply chain which quickly results in multiple TMCs, numerous policies, and duplicate contracts.
- Business expansions and growth - Especially when expanding into multiple countries, offices are likely to engage with in-country agencies and travel suppliers to manage a best-in-country program with rich content that supports their local travel needs.
- Fragmented teams - This is common amongst companies who have multiple entities and or locations, leading to fragmented teams and little-to-no structure in place when it comes to managing contracts and suppliers. With the rise in remote work in 2020 and 2021, more and more companies likely have fragmented teams.
As a travel manager, it’s up to you to sift through redundancies and determine how to manage multiple TMCs. Identifying ways to streamline your corporate travel program is a crucial part of protecting your organization’s travel and your sanity! After all, fragmented data from multiple TMCs can be just as challenging as fragmented data from multiple airlines, hotels, or car rental companies.
Consolidating and analyzing data on a monthly or quarterly (or even more frequent) basis is a time-consuming endeavor, regardless of your level of expertise with Excel. This can be especially difficult when merging data from multiple TMCs and supplier sites.
Downfalls to manually managing data from multiple TMCs:
- Program compliance is fragmented.
- Comprehensive duty of care coverage is sacrificed.
- Financial reporting is inaccurate and savings opportunities are missed.
- Travel managers’ time and efforts are misused.
- It’s impossible to identify user behavior patterns.
- Training your travelers to book compliant travel can be more challenging.
On top of these problems, you also have to deal with inconsistent data. Every TMC handles data reporting a bit differently, which makes it hard to normalize and combine data manually. To make matters even worse, you still have to standardize and combine your “for biz” supplier data with your TMC data to get close to complete visibility. Still, manual data gathering is never comprehensive or completely accurate, leaving you with risky travel program blindspots.
Common travel management company data quality issues:
- Varying formats
- Missing data for specific fields
- Mismatched currencies and incorrect conversions
- Data provided at different intervals
- Language barriers & spelling discrepancies
While these issues may be the reality that travel managers face today, there is an easier path forward. Let’s explore the benefits of automated, pre-trip data aggregation.
Imagine a single record of complete corporate travel booking data automatically consolidated for when you need to:
- Dive into your monthly budgets
- Run a cost analyses
- Identify trends in traveler behavior
- Prepare an upcoming supplier RFP
- Locate travelers quickly in a crisis
The benefits of data consolidation are boundless. Corporate travel managers can finally continuously audit their corporate travel program and address non-compliant bookings before travel occurs, regardless of how many TMCs, OBTs, or suppliers travelers use.
Regain time in your busy day and refocus your efforts on the vital aspects of your program including comprehensive duty of care, price assurance and securing competitive rates. Travel managers can coordinate all travel itineraries under one data management tool and close critical data gaps while gaining greater itinerary visibility.
Traxo is Your Single Source of Truth
By using our comprehensive, pre-trip data, travel managers can audit and manage travel itineraries booked across multiple TMCs, supplier sites, and OTAs. Organizations will gain complete visibility into all agency-booked transactions and off-channel transactions. Traxo’s automated booking aggregation eliminates manually merging data while creating more efficient reporting processes with consolidated data in one single source of truth.
Traxo’s comprehensive data insights tools provide travel managers with:
- Visibility into your organization’s complete program spend
- Pre-trip data analytics that allows you to influence and change behavior before trips occur
- Accurate duty of care coverage with enhanced itinerary awareness
- Data insights to effectively manage your supplier contracts
Your Corporate Travel Data Solution is Within Reach
Through Traxo’s technology, any travel segment booked using the traveler’s work email address is captured. Traxo’s Filter feature incorporates the booking source, itinerary details, and rate-specific information you need to make informed decisions while eliminating corporate travel blind spots.
“Now I have the resources available at my fingertips to run travel reports from both our TMC and Traxo to obtain a consolidated view of our travel spend and traveler whereabouts. Between Traxo and the TMC, it feels that 99.9% of booking data is now being captured.”
- Michelle Grant, Ritchie Bros
Join other travel managers who have leaped forward in managing their travel program data. To learn more about managing multiple TMCs and automated travel program auditing, contact us today.
