In a recent BCD Travel survey, travel buyers revealed that tapping into data is critical for everything from sharper supplier negotiations to better policy compliance and smarter spend management. It’s also the key to uncovering cost savings and closing gaps that may be less obvious.
Survey insights
BCD surveyed 197 travel buyers across key industries like manufacturing, life sciences, and financial services. Their top three program priorities?
- Savings and cost control – 94%
- Policy compliance – 90%
- Duty of care – 86%
When it comes to data-related priorities, buyers are most focused on enhancing collaboration with TMCs and travel suppliers around data collection and analysis (48%) and improving data quality (47%). This is followed by prioritizing consolidating data from different sources (44%), focusing on enhancing data analysis (42%), acting on insights (36%) and streamlining data collection (33%).
Turning data into action
Collecting data isn’t the goal – acting on it is. That means understanding the story that data reveals and turning it into actionable insights. Travel managers can use data to uncover shifts in out-of-policy booking patterns or identify non-compliant rental car bookings. They can then take corrective steps before a trip occurs. Cumulatively, these can enhance program performance and traveler experiences.
Sources of travel data
Travel buyers can use different sources of travel data – on their own or together – to inform business decisions. TMCs are a major source of travel data for most travel buyers (89%). Report payment and expense solutions (69%) and online booking tools (66%) are also top external data sources.
Most travel buyers dedicate time to working with travel data, but not often. The main reasons: lack of time (44%), no need (34%), and lack of data availability (16%). When they do make time for data, they find the most value in real-time trend analysis (64%) and built-in dashboards (57%).
“BCD Travel is capturing more data from more sources than ever before,” says Heather Wright, BCD’s vice president, Digital Strategy & Advancement. “We invest heavily in the consolidation, standardization and normalization of this data, ensuring the most accurate, quality data is provided back to our customers. We deliver this data through a variety of unique solutions that allow our customers to make decisions in real time.”
“BCD Travel is capturing more data from more sources than ever before,” says Heather Wright, BCD’s vice president, Digital Strategy & Advancement. “We invest heavily in the consolidation, standardization and normalization of this data, ensuring the most accurate, quality data is provided back to our customers. We deliver this data through a variety of unique solutions that allow our customers to make decisions in real time.”
Challenges and wins
Data adds value to travel programs, albeit in different ways. Data-driven decisions are informed decisions; they bring significant opportunity for improvement and growth. According to the survey, travel data brings particular value when it comes to negotiating with vendors (65%), improving compliance (59%) and optimizing spend (57%).
While improvements in capturing data are ongoing, challenges still exist. Data fragmentation (57%), making travel data proactive versus reactive (50%) and the lack of integration with other systems (43%) are the top three challenges travel buyers come across when working with travel data. When it comes to tracking traveler satisfaction as a KPI, 56% of respondents feel their data is insufficient.
Two-thirds of travel buyers aren’t fully confident in the quality of their travel data. By leveraging advanced analytics and new technologies, BCD offers clients accurate, actionable insights that support their evolving needs. Clients benefit from BCD’s data solutions and access to its full-service analytics and insights teams. This empowers smarter decision-making across travel programs.
To view the full data survey report, click here.
