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The Tech revolution

With the latest advancements in technology, namely Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) the next industrial revolution has commenced and enables organizations to overcome long-standing challenges and complexities while driving efficiency, transparency and experience. The travel category in particular is marked by a high degree of fragmentation and legacy technology on the one side and a high demand for better experiences on the other. Accordingly, there is immense potential to unlock AI’s benefits for all buyers and lodging partners across the business travel ecosystem. Now is the time for travel management to explore ways to introduce AI into their programs with best of breed partners.

The question is how?

5 Steps to AI Powered Next-Gen Program Management

1. Connect the dots:
The managed travel channel traditionally involves a high number of contributing providers and/or solutions to enable the traveler`s trip. While the individual systems are tech based and create relevant data points, the problem is that there is little to no connectivity facilitating the capability to access, share and aggregate the data. Connecting the trip end-to-end and creating a seamless flow of data is key for AI to perform its magic.

2. From data points to data lake:
In an ecosystem of shared data, some data is more relevant than other, and some only makes sense if brought into the right context and structure. Normalizing, deduplicating and aggregating the data in relation to a certain trip while in concert with defined corporate policy is the next step in getting closer to an AI powered program.

3. From static to dynamic:
Based on connectivity and the consolidation of data, ML can identify patterns in any travel program. By enriching these patterns with market data, leaders see information on the heartbeat of their program in real time, while also gaining from more accurate predictive developments in budget, destination and travel behavior. Moreover, AI can even model different scenarios for programs, “calibrating” the program based upon global and regional priorities and enabling decision making and automatically configuring the procurement platform and connected OBE.

4. From generic to personal:
Driving program compliance is key for managed programs to create transparency on spend, ensure duty of care and mitigate risk. Gen AI enables the capability to identify travel patterns and preferences of homogenous traveler groups, aka personas, to facilitate a more tailored program. By sourcing the relevant properties and presenting them in a persona-based order, travel program leaders can boost adoption and satisfaction.

5. From expense to experience:
The best expense report is the one that doesn’t have to be filed. Therefore, AI even helps to make bothersome expense reports a thing of the past. The fully-integrated payment solution allows travelers to walk away without having to pay upon check out. The digital invoice collection paired with OCR recognition and AI audits invoices for compliance and automatically triggers either correction with the hotel or enriches the invoice data with other relevant data points related to the trip to Level 3 quality. Downstream benefits include relevant data for VAT reclaim exercise and further procurement optimization.

More than a chat bot – how the HRS Platform uses Artificial Intelligence along the entire procure-to-reclaim process:

End-to-end robotic process automation (RPA) of the procure-to-reclaim process with seamless data flow and interconnected with travel eco-system to aggregate and clean data

AI-based recommendation for optimization and downstream configuration of connected platforms

AI-powered scenario builder with predictive forecasting

AI-enabled persona segmentation

AI-driven procurement and booking platform configuration

OCR recognition and automated audit and correction of invoices

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