Why Insight Into Corporate Travel & Expense Is More Valuable Now Than Ever Before

Tracy Gao
Tracy Gao
Tracy Gao, Director Product Marketing

Based in the Bay Area, Tracy is a product marketing leader at Coupa managing go-to-market for platform releases and and several key BSM areas.

Read time: 3 mins
Why Insight Into Corporate Travel & Expense Is More Valuable Now Than Ever Before

Placing tighter reigns on Travel and Expense (T&E)—which is second only to payroll as the most controllable expense for most companies—is a common Business Spend Management (BSM) practice. But in the pandemic era, where companies are navigating uncharted waters and the winds of economic change blow swiftly, corporate travel managers now need to go through their programs with a fine toothed comb, looking to root out any unnecessary spend or expense.

This makes travel program data—across travel spend, supplier performance, employee policy adherence and beyond—more meaningful and valuable than ever. It’s with this in mind that Coupa today announced the launch of Coupa Travel Saver Insights for Air, an advanced analytics solution that allows corporate travel managers to mine large datasets of air travel spend for new opportunities to reduce travel costs, improve supplier negotiations, and optimize overall travel program performance.

The Value of Pricing Data
Travel Saver Insights for Air captures pricing data on available, booked, and contract airfares when travelers purchase a ticket. By providing travel managers with airfare pricing data from the time of booking up until the time of travel, the solution offers full visibility into prices throughout the travel lifecycle, dramatically improving the effectiveness of travel sourcing programs. Travel managers can then use Travel Saver Insights to answer questions about their air program like:

  • Are there opportunity suppliers and/or routes that I should renegotiate with?
  • What is my most utilized fare class?
  • Do I have the right fare class, market and airlines representing in my negotiations?
  • Within each market, what percentage of the time did my travelers purchase my negotiated fare?

 

Coupa Travel Saver Insights Product Screenshot

 
The potential impact of Travel Saver Insights is massive. Consider this one datapoint the solution has distilled: of the top 10% of routes across Coupa’s customer base in 2019, 78% were negotiated, yet only 18% of those were at the lowest available rate. That’s a potential savings of over $643 million for Coupa customers!

Expanding the Travel Saver Insights Suite
This new solution complements Travel Saver Insights for Hotel, the managed travel industry’s most advanced prescriptive hotel analytics solution that provides a clear line of sight into savings achieved by implementing recommendations across sourcing, rate types and policy improvements. The combination of Travel Saver Insights for air and hotel provides travel managers with the comprehensive view they need to control costs across their entire program.

Across the Travel Saver Insights suite, Coupa’s Community Intelligence aggregates anonymous pricing data across thousands of itineraries to create datasets that can be used for benchmarking program performance. This data makes it easier for travel managers to evaluate the specific vendors they are partnering with and understand how their rates compare to those of similar companies. Armed with this information and Travel Saver Insight’s targeted recommendations, travel managers can take action right away to improve program performance.

Looking ahead, beyond the pandemic and towards the return of a more normal business travel environment, corporate travel managers may be more sophisticated than ever. With all eyes on T&E and companies leaning in for a closer look at the ROI on travel, this new level of sophistication—and solutions like Coupa Travel Saver Insights for air—are arriving right on time. 

 

Tracy Gao oversees product marketing for Coupa's T&E solutions. She resides in the San Francisco Bay Area and holds a B.A. in International Relations and an M.A. in Communication from Stanford University.