Robust Reporting – Turning Information into Insight, Control, and Substantial Savings

Travel costs are expected to soar in 2006. The high cost of fuel post-hurricane season has put additional pressure on the already-stressed airline industry and other providers of business travel services. In recent weeks, leading business consultants and travel industry experts from across the country, including analysts from PricewaterhouseCoopers, American Express, Carlson Wagonlit Travel, and World Travel BTI Travel Procurement Solutions have predicted that prices for air travel, hotels, car rentals, and meals may rise by as much as 7-15 % next year.

In the face of rising prices, wisely managing travel and entertainment spending will be more important than ever in the coming months. Companies can keep costs in check and maintain tight control over budgets by implementing T&E best practices. One fundamental best practice in these times of double digit increases is to capture, report, measure, and analyze comprehensive company-wide expense spending data.

Gelco Solutions Provide Valuable Insight
Gelco Reporting and Analysis Services give companies the tools they need to measure policy compliance, track spending patterns, monitor budgets, and subsequently make smarter strategic business decisions. With 42 pre-configured reports and ad-hoc reporting capabilities, Gelco's easy-to-use reporting tools make it possible to evaluate travel expense information by organization, location, or supplier. Real time access to travel expense data provides accurate, instant insight into every aspect of the expense management process, and insight is the key to transforming travel spend.

Comprehensive reporting provides the aggregate data that enables T&E managers to leverage significant volume discounts with vendors, update and enforce company-wide policies to ensure greater compliance, and realize substantial savings through increased budget control. Information collection and visibility help companies make better business decisions about everything from preferred suppliers to tax law compliance, and better decisions mean a stronger bottom line.

Making the Data Visible
With Gelco's Reporting and Analysis tools, you can find out what you need to know, when you need to know it. Company managers can generate reports to determine:

• Where money is spent: by categories, cost centers, project, payment type, vendor, etc.
• When activity occurs: when expenses were incurred, when payments were made, when account changes were made, when spending is highest or lowest, etc.
• Who is spending or receiving company funds: who has high spend amounts, which cost centers have high spend, who exceeds policy limits, who falls behind on approvals, which vendors are utilized, etc.
• How money is spent: average spend amounts, amounts due the company, changes in account configuration, expensed and paid accounts, expense out of policy, etc.

You can drill down through a multitude of standard reports to pinpoint pertinent details or create ad hoc queries to look at the data in different ways. The level of detail provided by Gelco Reporting and Analysis Services offers complete visibility into a company's T&E spending habits and patterns. The insights you gain from complete travel spend visibility can enhance collaboration and information exchange within and across your company, enable proactive T&E management, and transform data into knowledge for strategic planning, sound decision-making, and a competitive edge.

Better Data—Best Practices & Policies
Information becomes intelligence when put to work in the service of savings and efficiency. You can anticipate the increases in travel spend for the coming year and implement best practices in T&E management by using the insights provided by Gelco's Reporting and Analysis Services to:

• Negotiate with suppliers for volume discounts and customized arrangements
• Take advantage of region-specific travel rate fluctuations and differences
• Deliver suppliers the volume of business they were guaranteed
• Update enterprise-wide policies regulating use of preferred suppliers
• Track corporate card use and encourage compliance
• Monitor maverick travel spend and take proactive action
• Manage cash pro-actively

Travel industry experts agree that concentrating demand and guaranteeing suppliers a set volume of business results in the best rates and priority reservations for everything from airfares to meeting rooms. With rates expected to rise substantially for hotel services of all types, as well as for rental cars and car services, negotiating a bigger package can have significant advantages. Because rates can vary a great deal by region, you will want to rely on the insights you gain from Gelco Reporting and Analysis Services to make the smartest choices about where to concentrate your travel dollars. Vendors are also more confident in your spend commitments when you can demonstrate past performance.

Better Budget Forecasts Mean a Stronger Bottom Line
With the right information, you are equipped to make decisions that will streamline your T&E operations and result in substantial savings. Implementing best practices around T&E reporting enables you to monitor current spend patterns, anticipate the coming year's increases, and maintain control of your budget. If you know where, when, and on what your company's travel dollars have been spent, you can make the best decisions about how to spend—and how to save—in the future.

Customer Success
As an example of spending analysis supported through the Gelco system, American Standard has been assessing the costs of all flights, hotels, and meals in particular regions and identifying opportunities for cost reduction based on average costs as a benchmark. It has established new policies on maximum expenses and set thresholds around the averages to flag for further review.

In addition, they have been analyzing the cost of trips to serve customers versus trips for internal business. Interestingly, the company has found that it spends $200 to $300 more per trip for internal matters and has been investigating how it may bring those costs down, such as encouraging the use of alternative meeting methods such as phone.

As a result, American Standard's overall average trip cost since 2001 has been reduced by as much as 10 percent. Additionally, the business services team is now able to support more employees through the company's travel program, and the travel team's ability to process expense reports has improved 170 percent.

Another Gelco customer, Courion, has been able to use Gelco’s reporting services to translate data into smarter business decisions. “We have better data to use in response to inquiries from vendors and this data has improved our ability to lower vendor T&E costs. Our primary hotel vendor has given us much better rates because we know exactly how much we are spending with them.”

To learn more about Best Practices in Travel Spend Management, download the Aberdeen Group’s 2005 report here.