I think we are all familiar with the fact that travel has been behind the times quite a bit. We’ve relied on Bolton technologies to old systems and it has really given us an opportunity during COVID to update these things, take a look at where our areas of opportunity are and to see if we can do better. So with that in mind, I want to get going very quickly. First question that I want to run around to each of you is please, I’ll start with you, Carey, is where was your organization before COVID? What were the areas of opportunity? What suppliers were you utilizing and were there things that you were able to take a look at and hopefully update pre COVID?

Carey Pascoe:

Yeah, absolutely. Well, with the beginning of COVID, we had just finished up a five year plan where we had set out to do first a major TMC change going regional best in class and being very intentional with how we consolidate the data and roll that out with an OBT. Then the following year we did expense, then we did airline RFPs and we had done the major brush strokes and had just finished implementing the smaller things that you eventually get to that are really important, like hotel researching with TripBAM, things of that nature. So we just pretty much put a bow on top and we’re looking to reset the next three to five years. I’m a strong believer in setting long-term goals because it does take time to reach all those goals and to align them with where the company is going and where the needs are. But COVID rose the ultimate reset button to really take a look at, okay, now we have new gaps we haven’t had before.

Gyasi Edwards:

Yeah. I think that one of the biggest things has been the change management. Sounds like you guys were more on the front end of that as far as being ahead of time. So this allowed you to tighten up the things that you’d been already putting into place.

Carey Pascoe:

Well, yeah. I mean even part of that five year plan was setting the new security firm and that whole RFP. So we were really in great shape. Everything worked on a dime. We were able to call our resources partner with our TMC, partner with our security technology through World Aware, do all of these things and just really turn around reports, get everybody home. Those early days were fire in the hole, where is everybody? Let’s get them all home type of thing. That typical thing we all do is travel managers when something hits the fan and everything worked fantastically. So that was a feather in our cap. We were able to leverage all our tools and be really proud of what we had put together because it all worked.

Gyasi Edwards:

Nice. It’s a great success story. I think a lot of people were in a much different scenario going in into COVID and such. So kudos to you on that. Jessica, where were you guys at?

Jessica Banish:

Yeah. I mean, think we couldn’t have been more opposite from Carey. Unfortunately, we were in an overly too comfortable TMC relationship that was in place for more than 25 years, which we knew it was no secret, and we did have all of the Bolton puzzle pieces to make the whole thing work. When you think about, “Okay. Are we double checking our hotel prices, our air prices, are we rebooking when we need to?” And even when you talk about non-employee travel, can we piece that in? So we had this ovulated puzzle piece together program that was working before. It just was with a big travel program, it’s hard to turn the Titanic.

So while it was working, we knew that we had a lot of opportunity. We had several years on the contract left, so we thought, “You know what, let’s just plan for that future. Let’s plan to make these changes. Let’s study up on the travel technology and the innovation and let’s start to put our five year plan together like Carey had already executed on.” So that’s where we were at the beginning of COVID, and unfortunately with COVID, it exacerbated the issues that we knew we had, unfortunately.

Gyasi Edwards:

So I guess question for both of you follow up on that is I think a lot of it is data fragmentation between the different suppliers that you had and such. Carey sounds as if yours were speaking well to one another. Is that correct? And Jessica, it sounds as if yours, the Bolton probably was part of the main reason why you’re having a difficult time getting everyone rounded in. Does that sound accurate for both of you?

Carey Pascoe:

Yeah. We had set our TMC in the direct travel in the US as our lead, and that’s also where the bulk of our volume is. So we partnered with them really quickly and we’re in an open dialogue around resources, non-refundable tickets, all of the stuff that became really big issues for everyone. We were on top of it really quickly.

Gyasi Edwards:

Nice.

Jessica Banish:

We had to end up pulling all of our data ourselves and really taking on a lot of that data consolidation ourselves and manually doing some of it, some people taking some pieces and it was not pretty from a data perspective.

Gyasi Edwards:

Got it. Daniel, how was TravelBank positioned? I know you guys have made some fantastic updates in the way you guys are positioned towards the market and your relationships with TMCs and such. What were you guys doing your direction and what was the opportunity that you guys saw?

Daniel Duffy:

Yeah, absolutely. I think everybody knows at that time, travel was booming. We were 100% focused on travel. It was our highest by volume travel month. I believe, January, 2020 I think some people would say it was a gold rush era for the industry at that time. Really at its peak, and we’ve always been a technology first company and really out of necessity, and we were expanding our TMC capabilities. We are a full service TMC, but expanding support agents, teams, CSMs at that time. We were coming into a sales kickoff talking about opening an office in DC as well up north in Canada. So really it was expansion on all fronts. Travel was of focus, our expense product was more of a lead generation tool at the time. It was a differentiator for competitive bids and things like that. But really the focus was really enhancing travel in different sectors, in different markets and globally.

Gyasi Edwards:

Got it. And then Ashley, I mean think your guys’ perspective is fantastic. I think most of us have worked with Cvent or land over the years, very familiar with both. And what is your bird’s eye perspective going into COVID, the RFPs that you were seeing coming through? Were there things that you guys tweaked? I know personally having been at trip actions and such, there was Ingenia, there were ways in which the RFPs, a lot of times we would actually just come and say, this doesn’t fit for us because it isn’t apples to apples against say the legacy TMCs that Jessica was working with. So there was a lot of pushback and so that created a weird tension. What was the way that you guys were positioned and guys, how did you guys pivot a little bit to give people buyers the ability to look at new travel technologies and make sure that was a unified effort so that they could get all the information they needed to compare things from an apples to apples perspective?

Ashley Claire:

Yeah. So like you said, we are a travel and events software company. So prior to COVID, we were just trucking along with the usual, we were making enhancements to our products. We were trying to make the process easier for our customers. We’re looking at globalization and offering multiple language options. We were in the process of working with GBTA on the new RFP format, looking at developing new AI to help speed up the RFP negotiations. We were just doing what we could to be the best partner possible for our customers at that time. And what we were hearing from our customers pre COVID was mainly a focus on efficiencies and cost savings, which obviously is still a big focus now, but in a slightly different way since now our customers are dealing with furloughs and turnover and extremely tight budgets.

But COVID really forced us to think differently about everything and we as a company had to pivot to include things like virtual meetings through our attendee hub and getting really creative with our TMC partners. Most of the major TMCs are using Cvent as well, who were really struggling through this and we wanted to be a good partner to them. So as we were going through the process, we were just trying to work with all of our customers, including our TMCs, to help them through this.

And I’ll have to say as painful and devastating as COVID was, it was also a teeny tiny blessing in disguise because it gave us the opportunity to evaluate our own business and how we can really make a difference in the industry and with our customers. So we were able to pivot from being more reactive to being more proactive in our approach with our travel technology and helping our customers to do the same.

Gyasi Edwards:

Yeah. I think that that’s an excellent point. I think it was very difficult for a lot of folks to get through COVID and such, but I think a lot of us have seen it as such an opportunity to look at a more proactive approach to travel your expectations. And I think one key thing you mentioned there was budgets. I think clearly a lot of us were just on the road, especially if you’re in travel all the time and companies have now learned that they can lean on these different types of meetings, Zoom and such. We’re all getting the Zoom fatigue, which is like we’re all waiting to get back on the road. And I think hybrid meetings is one thing. I know there’s a lot of technologies out there. I’ve seen several.

Carey, I believe that you guys are implementing something there. And Jessica, I’m sure you guys are looking at it, Ashley. I’ve actually seen your guys’ platform against some other ones and is awesome. If you really have to have that option and depending on the size of your organization, there might be more red tape in order to get people together or not. So this is something to lean on. Carey, what’s your perspective on meetings? How is Dolby approaching this treading lightly allowing people to meet in small groups, or what is your guys approach?

Carey Pascoe:

Well, I mean I can speak to the gathering internally approach. We’re being very cautious. We’re not assuming everybody’s really even comfortable doing that. So we’re not having any major large gatherings in the near future. We’ve done some highly critical, high stakes industry specific smaller gatherings so that we could be present with our customers and partners. But we’re being really, again, the word intentional come up a lot with how we’re with our approach and people are starting to be a little anxious about getting in front of their customers and having these events again and seeing each other. You can do a lot more right now in your personal lives than you can in your business lives because business lives once your company pays for something, it’s a company sanctioned event and falls under completely different workplace safety rules.

And luckily if you do need to get together, a lot of the hotels and partners are operating under those guidelines anyways. But our approach is very slow to get people together. However, when we get back into the new normal, the after times, whatever you want to call them, when we’re back in the office and we’re working in this new flexible era, we anticipate a significant demand for small and large. We’ll want to resume our trade show presence obviously because that’s really important to our relationships.

We’ll want to engage our customers more, which has mostly been online, which for the new Dolby.io platform has been incredible to showcase that new meeting technology for us. But we’ll definitely have more small meetings as people have dispersed. And I know coming into the office list frequently there’ll be more ritual types of gatherings and I think most companies are going to try to leverage those, which means a lot of business groups planning smaller meetings, I think we’ll see an uptick in the industry.

Gyasi Edwards:

Yeah, I agree. What about from a technology standpoint? Is there some things that you guys want to leverage in order, so if people do want to virtually sign in or there’s ways that you’re tracking these meetings, anything that you guys have seen? I know that Group Eyes, Bisley, Cvent, there are some new great virtual platforms that offer a different experience. Is there anything that you guys are considering utilizing in that capacity to cautiously step into this meeting?

Carey Pascoe:

We’re currently working closely with Bisley because we want to deliver a self-help tool. The business groups, the EA and your companies are going to be the ones who know what their group wants to do and how they want to get together. You don’t want to take that away from them, but you do want to give them an efficiency tool so that they’re efficient and can do the searching. And you also want to make sure you’re mitigating risk by parking contract terms that they can leverage. And you also want to make sure you’re consolidating all this data because it’s notoriously for years when one of those spend categories that allude buyers, nobody knows how much they’re spending on these little guys and if you’re even capturing them all or know about half of them, you have to really dig around and find out. So we’re excited to not only deliver an efficiency tool to help people do their jobs better, but to also gather some of this and mitigate the risk that comes with them as far as contract terms, et cetera.

Gyasi Edwards:

Makes a lot of sense. Jessica, how about you guys? What’s Genpact looking at from this perspective?

Jessica Banish:

Yeah. It’s a pretty similar outlook. As Carey mentioned, still fairly virtual for the time being, especially until we get some clarity with all the different international regulations, the different border regulations. So I think looking back to office around September, but Genpact does have a large India presence, so that’s being treated a little separately right now given the outbreak there. I mean just any large program we have to plan for a hybrid future. We can’t necessarily assume that everyone’s going to be always comfortable traveling and there’s all sorts of data privacy issues as well.

So working with Cvent and our meetings team and trying to figure out what the best offering is for those small, medium and large meetings and then how do we keep our employees safe and going to the larger conventions and what can we offer. So it’s still a little bit of a question mark for us, but very similar to Carey. We need to make sure that we’re answering all the different possibilities from virtual to a hybrid to in-person.

Gyasi Edwards:

Ashley, want to move to you on this one because you guys actually have a virtual platform. What is your take on this? Are you guys having high adoption success there? What does the market look like from a trending perspective from virtual meetings on your end?

Ashley Claire:

Yeah. So we made a huge pivot from software that mainly focused on in-person meetings and events as well as travel technology to this big focus on our attendee hub for virtual meetings. And while we did see a lot of mainly just virtual meetings over the course of this last year, we’re now seeing this shift to hybrid meetings. And hybrid meetings can mean so many different things to different organizations. We have some organizations who are looking at hybrid meetings as a way to say, “Hey, if you’re not comfortable traveling here, then we have this option to live stream to you. You assign into the Cvent attendee hub and we’re going to stream the event live to you. You can ask questions, you can interact with people and not the same way but in a way that you were never able to do before.” So that’s one way to look at hybrid meetings.

The other way to look at hybrid meetings is by utilizing both virtual and person elements so that you can essentially cut down on some of the costs of meeting in person or some of the risks that are involved with traveling and staying over at different places. So maybe having a virtual component to your meeting where people are pre-training or listening to some information that’s streaming ahead of time and then just meeting for a couple of hours during a day so that they’re not having to stay overnight anywhere. That’s going to help to reduce cost and make it a little bit safer for some of the travelers who might not be comfortable staying in a hotel yet.

So hybrid can mean so many different things to so many different organizations. So we’ve seen a lot of success with that model with the companies who have been adopting it. And now even we’re starting to see more and more in-person events, they’re starting to come back. And I think what Carey said is very important to think about the smaller size meetings and keeping things maybe contained or localized, so that you don’t have to worry about people traveling all over the place. Having that approach to small meetings and making sure that they’re regulated and monitored and tracked within your organization is incredibly important.

And one of the things that we’re working on now is a feature called Instant Book so that folks like your executive assistants can log into the platform and be able to book a meeting room at a place that was already pre-approved. So everything is getting tracked in the same system so that everybody’s on the same page and you can make sure that you’re keeping up with duty of care where they’re going, you’re able to control their cost and you’re tracking that information as well. So that was a big shift that we made within Cvent as a whole and I feel like it’s been very successful for us and extremely helpful for our clients who need the ability to meet but weren’t able to do it in person.

Gyasi Edwards:

From a Nina & Pinta perspective, very similar to what the three of you are talking about, our clients have been trying to figure this out. It really depends on a global scale or smaller, how much red tape you’re looking at and trying to figure out how do you let people be happy and get what they’re need, but also taking care of those that have more trepidation and just trying to take it one step at a time. And I want to actually remind everyone, we will hang on a little bit after this panel, if you have questions, please pose them in chat and then we can definitely get those to the panelists because we have agreed to hang on just a little bit longer, but I did want to pivot over a little bit with that.

I think it was mentioned earlier, EAs have the ability to book. I know that within certain platforms now they’re giving you the ability, you find unique spaces. Obviously hotels are there, but there’s restaurants that have patios and if you’re that one sales guy where maybe your team can’t get together but you want to go meet your prospects, you’re looking for these unique spaces. I think that’s some of the things that are coming through some of these platforms I know Bisley and some of these other ones have that going on. I think one of the keys to that is the finance portion of it.

So Dan two part pivot over to you is what have you guys seen TravelBank is like? What are you guys looking at as far as in-person getting out to your prospects and your clients as well? And then also too I think that expense component, you guys are doing some pretty interesting things there, so I’d love to get your thoughts on both of those.

Daniel Duffy:

I got to applaud our leadership team when last March, when it became very apparent the travel would subside for undetermined amount of time, we quickly shifted all of our resources to expense. No travel focus at all. So engineers our product, really building out our expense offering and actually changed our pricing model the same week to make it a solely subscription model. I know that there’s been some webinars and some publications about travel moving to a subscription model. Well, we’ve been that model now for over a year and a half where for one fee a month there’d be unlimited travel and expense by the end user. And that goes along with really what we’re seeing and what we envisioned is that on the employee level, a lot of things were decentralized, but because of everybody working from home or working from anywhere, you need to really complete that ecosystem for the employees to be able to pay for things, expense, reconcile and ultimately have that control and visibility for the organization.

So a lot of our enhancements over the last year and a half was completing that complete ecosystem for travel expense, credit card management. A couple things that we did that were very, very exciting is one on the FinTech front we did partner with US Bank. We are their preferred partners and when you partner with our organizations, you have the ability to send virtual cards out to all the different employees, like one time virtual cards. So you don’t actually have to put a complete robust card program together and issue a bunch of cards. You’re able to send things out. And to give you one example, at TravelBank we get a work from home stipend. So each month we get a virtual card that we can use really towards anything if it’s a membership to an app for yoga or if you want to buy a new standing desk or things like that. We’re actually already utilizing that.

And we double down with Brex as well and are fulfilling their rewards platform. We had a lot of interest coming that users wanted new ways to actually redeem their points. So we’re excited to provide the ability to actually redeem points to cryptocurrency and I think everybody knows crypto right now. I mean it’s all over the news, but we’ve had a lot of exciting traction with that as well, rather than just getting Amazon gift cards and things like that, being able to redeem it for cryptocurrency. I know we talked a little bit about using this time as an opportunity and we actually had some very innovative and technology forward. TMCs actually come to us and these were some leading TMCs and really what they wanted to do is use this time to build out their travel tech stack just like what we’re talking about today.

So they approached us to license TravelBank for a couple of reasons. One is they felt that some of the tools they were using were legacy tools. They weren’t really user friendly on the travel front, but they also saw an opportunity with our expense product in giving their sales team a viable product to sell during this time when nobody was traveling. So we partnered actually with Edelman Travel and with World Travel Inc to relicense TravelBank so that they can go out there and they can actually sell this product to their current customers, to future customers. And because of that, we’ve actually had a lot more interest in that and I think that’s a direction we’ll continue to go is to actually license our platform out to these other TMCs.

So to say, we’ve been improving our product and moving forward to be an understatement. We’ve been very, very busy over this last time and I think you’ll continue to see with us some really exciting things not only within travel and expense, but opportunities actually touch travel. So exciting things to again provide employees the tools to really excel in this new… I know a lot of people say work from home, but really this work from anywhere environment. If it’s at home or if it’s in the office doing small meetings or just working in different locations in those type of things, giving them the ability to be successful as well as it’s giving the tools to the administration and to management so they can actually track all this as well.

Gyasi Edwards:

Yeah, interesting. I think expense have been a key component of where there’s been a lack of control for a lot of organizations over the years. I think with some of the things that I’ve seen in trends is definitely that virtual card, how can you control the payment the per diems, give people the freedom to what they do, but actually the specific visibility. Carey, you stated that you guys had pretty good control over things from an expense perspective. Were there some gaps in areas that you guys could tighten down on? Or if not, what was your guys set up, and how are you utilizing policies and cards in order to make sure you had those budgets where you wanted them?

Carey Pascoe:

Well, everybody’s got a great corporate card program joint and several, so pretty much everyone in the company has access to their corporate card. We mandate it and we have extremely high compliance. We also have a transaction data feed into our… Think of the typical leading brand expense platform, concur, and we are an SAP shop, so that was working and there’s no changes there except volume going off a cliff that still works just fine. We are looking at some additional opportunities to add functionality around automating a lot of the laborious processes associated with audit and approval. So we have set our receipt threshold as about as high as you can with the IRS around the globe, you’re not going to see any dollar amount where you don’t have to attach a receipt. I think most countries outside of the US are going to have 100% receipt rule or regulation.

In other GEOs, they’re very cautious around teeny being a way of incentivizing or paying employees extra. And I think most of you might know that there’s actual statutory tax laws in some countries in Europe where you absolutely have to not go over a certain amount or it’s considered income. So keeping all that in mind, we did lift in the US the receipt threshold as far as we could and be comfortable with IRS rules. So we’ve streamlined that, but that does leave a lot to the teams to actually audit once that expense report is entered. So we’re looking at some additional travel tech to automate some of the problem areas so that teams are working from a dashboard versus line items. And there’s a couple of them out there absent and Oversight, which is part of Concur or partnered with Concur.

Gyasi Edwards:

Got it. So adding that on to your existing system right now essentially?

Carey Pascoe:

Looking at.

Gyasi Edwards:

Well, for you. Jessica, how about you guys? What is your perspective on that? How have you been looking at it, the expense thing, virtual card, getting a reign on that? Is there anything you guys were doing or looking to do different?

Jessica Banish:

Yeah, we actually took the opportunity last year to do an RFP for corporate card. While we have had and will have again a very robust program, it was not a preferred bank from a treasury perspective to the company. So we went to market and we actually chose a new supplier for our card itself, one that could provide any virtual card rolling in our PCard program, actually expanding that to just get better payment terms from suppliers, so expanding the PCard program as well as obviously the travel cards and corporate cards. So while volume was down we thought, well, this is the time to do it because it was one of those things that had been in place for 10, 20 years and it was just time.

So this year we’re in that implementation phase for the new card and we’re pretty excited about that because we were actually able to go with a treasury preferred bank, so that makes our treasury folks happy and they’re able to provide all the functionality that we need for our meetings and events for virtual cards. I mentioned non-employees, so interviewees, contractors, things like that. We can do the virtual cards for them as well. So pretty excited that we were able to get that in place. We’re a Concur shop as well and just making sure that we can get the right data feeds, and the new supplier is able to do that and has done it with multiple providers.

Gyasi Edwards:

Nice. So curious, the card that you implemented, does that have specific per diems limits, say for a car rental or hotel or food? Is it very specific to that and does it track right back in to Concur? How’s that set up?

Jessica Banish:

It can. The company does not do that. So with some project workers, very few, there is a per diem in place and we can manage that at a project volume level or an individual level, however we need to do that. We can set those per diem levels. Other than that, the company does not choose to do that, but the functionality exists.

Gyasi Edwards:

Okay. Dan, just a quick on your guys’ end of things. Working with US Bank, what is the capabilities that you guys have that you guys see as a premium or for your partners that you want to be able to deliver to them?

Daniel Duffy:

I think it’s having not a cookie cutter program, knowing that the environment’s different and that you have different employees and some employees, you have executives that might have a high level of spend. And then you need to really, like you said, dial it down a little bit that maybe certain employees can only spend it on certain verticals or Amazon and things like that. And knowing that other employees, you don’t want to give them a card, you just want to provide them virtual cards. But being able to have the controls, number one, to have the amount, to have an expiration date on it as well, they have to use it by a certain time that you can put any type of coding on it. This is for marketing, this is for sales, and then it also reconciles in. So a lot of the virtual cards spend historically has not been able to be tracked. It’s usually on personal cards.

So this is exactly what I’m seeing with Jessica is it’s probably the leading product that we’re seeing right now is companies are looking at card spend, how do we control the spend now because they want to centralize employee spend where previously if you’re in the office, everything’s taken care of except for your sales team. And now you’re giving per diems for things like utilities, like Wi-Fi for work, from home expenses and those type of things as well.

So we’ve seen that a lot and involved and what we’ve done, I think that has been very unique is you’ve probably seen that everybody has come out with their own credit card. I just got an email that Ford wants me to use their credit card. I don’t know why I need a Ford credit card, but how we’ve really approached the market is because each company is going to do things differently. We partner with all card companies as well. So giving you really that freedom of choice, but if you do want a recommendation based upon what you’re looking for, we might recommend US Bank, we might recommend Brex or any of our other financial providers.

Gyasi Edwards:

That makes a lot of sense. I think the key thing you said there was not a cookie cutter program. I think this time allowed people to look at things from that perspective of not just adding on, but hey, let’s actually go and get the things that make the most sense. Ashley, that’s a good lead in for you, actually. So how from an RFP perspective, when things weren’t apples to apples, how did you guys respond allowing people to ask those specific questions or allowing suppliers to express themselves from a unique perspective within the platform so that people could actually get to the end result they’re looking for with the RFPs?

Ashley Claire:

Yeah. So one of the biggest shifts that we’ve noticed during this time is that companies are really starting to look at travel meetings as more of an investment than just a cost center. Especially when you incorporate what we refer to as purposeful travel to ensure that there’s a direct benefit to the flight or the hotel or the meeting. And purposeful travel is about understanding the why of business travel and not just traveling just to seem busy or because that’s always what you’ve done. It’s understanding that there is a direct benefit from this client meeting or from this team meeting that you’re holding that your finance team and internally your stakeholders can really see a benefit to that travel. And it’s important to be more strategic in travel planning and not just in the travel technology that you’re using, but in things like combining multiple trips or multiple clients within one trip or combining a team meeting with a client presentation or just ensuring that the travel is productive and meets objectives.

And with so many companies being short staffed and taking on more responsibilities now, it’s really important to be as efficient as possible in your processes and being open to new travel technologies and ideas out there. And for a lot of companies it could be scary to have a corporate card program where you’re giving people credit cards, but it’s important in the industry to keep moving forward and to take advantage of those innovations. And some of the things that we’ve been working with on our clients as far as strategies go, like combining meeting and travel spend so that you can get the best rates possible utilizing multiple different rate types, including dynamic with ceiling when you’re negotiating your transient rate so that you can help to control those costs but also take advantage when the market is really low. Like it has been recently.

I mentioned before, the hybrid meetings, both virtual and in-person options. So the people who can’t travel are still able to participate and benchmarking, making sure that you’re getting as much data as possible comparing negotiated rates against bar or against the industry or against OTA sites out there to make sure that you’re getting the best deal possible. Also, things like being proactive about rate availability, making sure your rates are actually available to be booked as well as auditing for amenity inclusions I think are really important things that people are starting to identify as ways to be more efficient and to help control their costs.

We’re also working on some enhancements like data consolidation, being proactive in collecting data in our transient sourcing system to reduce that back and forth that frankly nobody has time for anymore. So we’re doing things like getting sustainability information and COVID cleaning procedures into our transient sourcing system so that our customers have that information at their fingertips and they don’t need to waste any time going back and forth with hotels to gather that type of information. And these are just some of the things that we’ve been working on to help our clients so that they can be as efficient as possible and saving as much as they can. And it doesn’t have to be complicated. There’s plenty of companies out there, Cvent included, who can ensure that the travel technology you’re using will help to ease the transition into the new era of travel and meetings that we’re all going into now.

Gyasi Edwards:

Nice. Makes a lot of sense. Jessica, how about you guys from looking at the roadmap next six months, what are you guys looking to do and achieve personal goals as far as implementing a new travel technology? I think one of the big things we’re talking about right here is actually just adoption. It’s really about making sure we’ve got that data flow and pulling everything in which translates to going to your suppliers, having the leverage to getting those rates you’re looking at versus just trying to implement say OTA. I actually used to work in that space quite a bit and we’d try and put our content within said systems like concurrent such to really drive that adoption. It was about getting that visibility in there. For you guys, what are you looking at for the next six months to implement to make sure you’ve got the adoption and the leverage to get those suppliers in place?

Jessica Banish:

So I have to say that the proverbial stuff hit the fan for COVID. For us, it just exacerbated the point that our TMC was just not strategically linked to us like we needed them to be. And when you’re talking about a travel program that pre COVID was above a billion dollars a year. That’s really unfortunate. This piece together technology meant that we lost tens of millions in unused air tickets, refunds that could have happened that probably didn’t happen on time. So the first objective is to go to market at the TMC space and really try to get as holistic as possible of a solution for a global travel program.

Carey recently went back and said, okay, regional best in class is best for us. Maybe that’s what we need to look at. So for the first time in 30 years, stepping back and just being able to really look at your program and say, “With all of this innovation, with all this technology, what should we look like?” We clearly don’t have that answer right now. So how do we really step back and shape a program that’s going to support our travelers the way that we need to support them, including the things that actually mentioned around comfort of all the information that you need for the hotels. For example, hotels is the area of the most leakage that we have from a booking perspective. So we definitely need to solve a lot of that for our travelers and we don’t want to have to go here for this and over there for that and over there for that, we want ATMC that’s going to really help us pull all of that together, understanding that we’re a Concur shop, but if we need to change that, we will.

So I think really looking to more of the AI and understanding how our travelers are comfortable is going to look different once we can open up travel a little more and taking the opportunity to really shape the program around that. So that’s our objective and it’s a big one, but quite honestly it needs to be done and I think it’s a good time to do it because there is so much change. So we’ll be able to move and mold along with it as we get all these different options, like the different hotel information that we need to understand. Same with airlines.

Gyasi Edwards:

Yeah, makes a lot of sense. So it sounds like there’s two different ways to go. It’s like either we get more of a holistic program and offering what Daniel’s talking about with TravelBank and US Bank and what they’ve put together there. Or there’s the route that Carey has where it’s like we’ve actually got different suppliers that are working regionally well for us, they’re communicating properly, and so we’re getting what we need out of this. So utilizing the right RFP process.

Carey, can you give me some insights into how those different suppliers you’re working with are actually communicating well together? Is it through some APIs or are you doing much of the legwork to consolidate this? How are you getting these different technologies to work so well in different regions for you to get to your end goal?

Carey Pascoe:

Okay. So it’s like proactively managing your care. The doctor doesn’t come and tap you on the children say, “Hey.” Maybe you ought to get that checked out because you turned whatever age today, you have to proactively manage these things. So a lot of our successes come from a good old fashioned monthly call, but we were, again, in the bid in the RFP, we did marry two partners by contract and one is standalone. So it’s really two contracts we manage and as part of the implementation process and understanding moving forward is the funnel of data so that it all ends up with our lead TMC in the US. And we’re in the business of providing some very complicated reports internally with a lot of manual manipulation and we’re now getting that fed into our tool so that budget managers can internally go in and see where they’re at.

Travel management reporting is fantastic, but if a budget manager… If Gyasi, I come to you and say, “Hey boss. Can I go to Dallas next week to call on this customer?” And you’re like, “I don’t know where we are with budget. Where do I go find that information? Wait, I got a report from a month ago that says we’re here, but I don’t know what’s happened since that type of thing.” So a lot of companies struggle with that. So it’s making that more visible. The budget managers is our next step.

But yeah, it’s not as complicated to get everybody talking to each other as it would mid seem. But I do want to stress we are mid-market and again, we were intentional, so we structured our whole RFP process around solving this issue around who’s going to talk to what and how’s the data going to get around. So when you start from that versus having it happen by accident and having to fix it versus approaching it that way out of the box, it’s a little different. And I don’t know that we have much more challenges than a mega TMC would with getting data out of 17 countries into one spot.

Gyasi Edwards:

Jessica, I think you have a great perspective on that one when you’ve got a million different countries on a global perspective, having come from GE, is that the proverbial stuff that hit the fan? Is that really where it was at? Was just that fragmentation in different areas for you guys?

Jessica Banish:

Yeah, nightmare. We do have a reporting and dashboarding tool that was built internally, which also means it takes months to get any changes or updates to it. So in the middle of COVID we needed some very specific things that we just had to go and manually pull and put together. So yeah, the fragmentation even under one TMC was pretty horrific. So I think again, just exacerbated what we already knew and made it more urgent to make changes to the program.

Gyasi Edwards:

So from an NNP perspective, what we’re hearing a lot is very similar. How are suppliers communicating to one another? How can we get this holistic ecosystem put together? Dan, you guys have been really on the forefront of that. You mentioned a couple of partners that you guys have. Is that something you guys are continuing to do to build out a portfolio of partnerships so you’re offering is expansive towards potential clients and people that you want to work with?

Daniel Duffy:

Yeah, absolutely. We’re going to continue to double down on partnerships. They’ve been very successful. So I think you’re going to see some interesting things continue to happen in the TMC space with some licensing in the FinTech space as well. We just became a Visa preferred technology partner, so really doubling down on these partnerships and we really are striving to be that all in one solution. But with that, and Carey spoke to this, it doesn’t have to be all at once or all one supplier and each company’s different. So not every company’s going to see the benefit of the all-in-one, but some of the largest clients that we’ve been able to secure and partner with over the last year have I really been that all in one solution.

So we always say T&E, but it’s really TENC is how we’re looking at it and with all the investment which VC investment with FinTech and those type of things, I really feel that even if it’s not the one supplier that they are harmoniously integrated. Like Carey said, they’re talking to each other and at the end of the day you really want that data. So if you can have that data, you can make data driven decisions, which I think is very, very important. So I do see that as a trend.

Us as a business, travel has resumed significantly just because of some of the market segments that we service. So I think we’re lucky in that respect just based upon our client portfolio. So we are already revisiting some of those expansion plans that we had pre COVID, which is really exciting. Because of a lot of our success actually over the last 15 months, we also moved up market where we have enterprise division now and we’re going to continually build out our functionality for the enterprise type market.

And going back to what I said earlier is looking at ways where we can enable the employees to really work from anywhere. That they have the tools and they have the support if it’s travel, if it’s expense, if it’s payment solutions or some other things that maybe fall outside of travel that can really enhance that experience for that. So I think it’s very well in line with the other panelists and what we’re seeing and the direction that we’re going.

Gyasi Edwards:

Yeah. So question that popped up in my head on there is really the communication with the change management. So you guys are implementing these new things, you’re going to RFP and you’re trying to communicate. There’s something new that you’re utilizing? So I think we know within SAP Concur, there’s the ability to put a banner up there, but how often do people just go and read that? That’s just popping up there. Are you guys utilizing some new technologies? Carey, I’ll start with you to communicate the rollout of these new things. You mentioned you’re rolling out Bisley, are some new angles to keep people engaged and make sure they’re getting the information they need on these new fronts that you guys have available to them?

Carey Pascoe:

Yeah. So I think the biggest thing moving forward is there’s got to be a lot more information. So as we pull back on business critical approvals and slowly give certain GEOs or certain types of travel an open form, okay, you’re good, you go. You don’t need to go through pre-approval, go. We want to roll out some communication tools. We’re building out a trip platform, which takes our old net intranet page with links to information, puts it in a living thing where you can map out your hotel, you can map out what restaurant is near your hotel, what is how close to the office. You can type in a customer site and plan around that. All our preferred suppliers are in there, all of their COVID protocol, our policy, it’s basically your one stop shop for everything.

And the reason why we did that is because people are going to need more information. Our road warriors that in 2019 ran out the door an hour before they think they remember their flight was scheduled. I’m guilty. I thought the app’s just going to tell me if I’m delayed or there’s a gate change. That’s all wrong. People who had traveled a lot are hitting the airports right now. They’re like, “Okay. Whereas what is this place? It’s supposed to be distancing, but there’s people crawling everywhere and we’re supposed to be distant, but they’re queued up at the…” There’s so many things about the whole travel process that are going to feel new and janky to people that we wanted a great place for them to communicate.

And also they’ve got better tips than me. As the travel manager, my team, we can’t have unlimited budget and time to go walk the walk of all our travelers. They’re the ones who need to let us know how the hotel was, give a tip on this airport, what was their Uber ride. The communication amongst themselves is hugely important. Yes, we need to see that so we can make changes or react, but their tips and tricks shared amongst a global community of employees is huge. So it’s like our own personal travel advisor on top of it. So we’re really excited about that. And we’re also integrating trick kicks insights into the booking process and concur. So in case you didn’t go in and plan and look at your restrictions and protocols, it’s going to be right there when you book.

Gyasi Edwards:

Nice. Jessica, how about you guys?

Jessica Banish:

Yeah. Same with the booking. Just trying to put as much information up front as we can. We’re also seeing a trend that people really are doing research ahead of time now. That didn’t happen before. So our intranet site that used to be these static PDFs of, “Hey, click this link if you want to research X, Y, Z,” and it would be good for the whole year. That approach is gone. It is much more interactive. It’s links that take you to live pages that are up-to-date. Here’s the latest border controls, here’s the latest whatever, hotel chain regulations and practices, making sure, and we are seeing lots of clicks on those.

We’ve also seen an uptick on our Yammer pages and people are, great example Carey. People are sharing those tips and tricks and here’s what I’m finding, or people posing a question, “Hey, has anybody traveled to Oklahoma? Has anybody traveled to England? What’s going on where?” And people are getting more interactive, much more so than they used to be. So it’s nice because the last thing you want to do is blast out tons of emails of all these updates that people just ignore over time. So it’s great to have that traveler interaction as well. So we’re making sure to keep those links up to date and make sure that we’re getting as much information to the travelers as we can.

Carey Pascoe:

Awesome.

Gyasi Edwards:

Nice. Ashley, from your perspective, you mentioned sustainability was some things that you guys put more of a premium on within your platform and such the things we’re talking about now, communication, Carey mentioned trip kicks and trip and some of these sorts of things. Cvent, have you guys created space within the platform to look at that or is it on the roadmap to make sure that people can identify that as a major component of their travel programs moving forward?

Ashley Claire:

Yeah, both. We’ve been enhancing the communication as we go along and I think that that’s something that we are going to continue to enhance within the meeting side of the platform. We’re looking at better ways to communicate to your staff your different policies and procedures that you have in place. And going back again to what Carey had mentioned before, there’s so many different people within an organization who could have a hand in meetings and travel. And I think it’s really important that they understand there are restrictions in place. Even if, “It’s just my little meeting that I’m going to schedule,” it doesn’t matter. There’s procedures in place for good reason.

So we’re working on ways that we help our customers communicate that information, not just to their meeting department or their travel department, but to the other people who are planning meetings, to their attendees, to their employees within the virtual attendee hub, working on ways that they can ask questions and be able to get answers and then not just live where somebody has to go through and scroll and see what was answered and what was not, but a way to capture that information and be able to report on it later. So if somebody attended a meeting, you would be able to send them the follow-up Q&A afterwards that they have something in writing that they can refer back to and have a record of that information.

And then on the travel side, looking at communication in the sense of globalizing our platform. So not just being available in English but available in 18 different languages because globalization is important and it’s important to not only have English speakers using the platform, but for it to be open and available for everybody and to be able to communicate your travel policies. And then also all of the additional perks that you’re getting from each of those hotels so that your travelers can see, maybe you think you’re getting a better rate by booking on Expedia or Orbits or another website like that, but within the Cvent hotel directory you can see we’re getting breakfast included and we’re getting airport transportation and all of these other things that were pre-negotiated to give us the best rate possible and that’s why you should be booking in program at the hotels that we’re approved. So we are holistically trying to make communication better as well and helping our customers do that both currently with new features within the tool and on our roadmap.

Gyasi Edwards:

Yeah, makes a lot of sense. I think one of the keys there, and I think most of us know this is in the travel industry, it used to be compliance or traveler satisfaction. It was really hard to marry the two. To find the technologies and get the communication that you needed and the policy adherence in order for someone to be happy. But also too, to make sure you’re getting your data there too. Dan, you guys have a holistic approach to this communicating between what you guys are doing and say if you’re working with Edelman Travel and such, how are you helping your clients make sure they’re getting the information across to their potential travelers?

Daniel Duffy:

Yeah. I mean, we listen a lot and that’s what our roadmap is dictated on rather than just thinking if you build it, they will come. So we really try to take what we see in the market, what we’re hearing, and that really dictates our product roadmap. With the TMCs, we partnered with them like a true partnership as well as all of our partners so that we can enable them with the tools. And really our technology’s a differentiator and that’s why we continually have new partners want to join us. So it’s a collaborative approach, but I think at the end of the day, we’re really strong on partnerships. I know I’ve said that a lot, but we really invest in them and listen and collaborate and I think that’s really the big differentiator with us in how we provide new tools to the market.

Gyasi Edwards:

Nice. Yeah, I think with the innovation, you can have more collaboration, you can have higher expectations of your suppliers, you can have an ecosystem that gets folks together from a communication perspective and then also from an adherence to policy perspective, keeping them safe, but back on the road. Thank you guys. I want to thank each of you so much for your unique perspectives and taking the time to have us talk to me. I haven’t seen any questions pop up in chat yet, which means I think you guys have answered every possible question anyone can have about technology and travel. But that said again, thank you very much for taking the time. I think we were actually good to go. So I’ll follow up with you guys and say thanks. Everyone who attended, thank you for coming.