Corporate travel analytics specialist Prime Numbers Technology
plans to integrate payment card and expense data into its Prime Analytics reporting
and benchmarking suite, the company told BTN. Integrating that data gives
corporate travel buyers a complete picture of trip spend in one place. Previously, the suite captured only spending that took place through Prime
Numbers' travel management company partners, such as air and hotel bookings.
Prime Numbers is building a beta version
of the service with several corporations that have signed on to connect
corporate card and expense flows to Prime Analytics, according to Prime Numbers general manager and VP Mark Bresnahan. Full rollout
of the service is planned for the second half of 2019, he said. "We saw this as an evolution of the [Prime Analytics]
tool that we had to have. Without integrating credit card and expense data, you
don't offer a full picture of a trip because you're not getting visibility
into anything booked outside of a TMC," noted Bresnahan. As an example, he cited a hotel booking made through
a TMC. While the room cost would be captured via the TMC integration, any room
service or other costs paid with an employee's credit card wouldn't flow into
the reporting tool, meaning the total cost would have to be reconciled manually from
multiple sources.
Other TMCs and reporting providers recently have made
strides to integrate card and expense data into their data flows. Last year,
FCM Travel Solutions began
incorporating card spend data from AirPlus International into FCM's
ClientBank reporting platform for mutual clients of the two firms. Meanwhile, American
Express Global Business Travel and American Express share
data for reporting, while Carlson Wagonlit Travel's Travel
Consolidator tool captures corporate credit card spending and
expense reporting data flows.
Four Prime Analytics TMC partners have signed on to
resell the card and expense integration tool to their travel buyer clients, but
Prime Numbers also is targeting direct sales to corporates to provide more flexibility,
Bresnahan said.
"We don't want to penalize a corporation that invests
in integrating their credit card, expense and TMC data into one tool, should
they decide to switch TMCs. Therefore, we're not positioning the product
specifically as a TMC resell," Bresnahan noted. "However, the
corporation will likely want the TMC to continue to administer the tool and
analyze the program for them, which is a substantial value-add."