Get your data strategy ready for more changes – and opportunities – coming in 2018
Phat Data is a concept built on getting the right data, making it actionable and designing a strategy around it to strengthen your travel program and your career. By now, you’ve already settled on your data strategy, put the pieces in place and started to see results. Is there more work to do in the year ahead? You bet there is.
As we move into 2018, economies are strong and business travel is booming. More travel means more Phat Data opportunities. If you haven’t started your data strategy, there’s no time like the present. If you have, remember – the process is never ending, so now is a good time to review and renew.
Way back in the early days of Phat Data, the concept of getting to wisdom was highlighted. It is an important part of process. Whether you are a beginner or advanced in the concepts of Phat Data for your travel program, every piece of data should bring you one step closer to getting to wisdom.
It works like this: we take data and turn it into information, which in turn becomes the wisdom that helps us manage our travel programs. For example, your air spend on a specific carrier is a piece of data. If you take that air spend and review your contract performance, that data is turned into information.
However Phat Data really becomes powerful when it becomes wisdom, for example, taking that information, comparing it to other carriers and similar routings, and then determining which carrier provides best value for the spend. But for more punch, add data around your traveler’s behaviors to find out why they choose one carrier over another. That really delivers the wisdom!
That may seem like a simple example. For those of you that have been working through your Phat Data strategy over the past year or so, you’re looking for wisdom that the data is providing you so you can better manage your program and provide a superior experience for your travelers.
On the other hand, if the data hasn’t provided wisdom over the last year, then the time has come to reevaluate the Why? Why am I collecting this information if I can’t make it actionable? And if I can’t make it actionable, why not? What do I need to further make this data more actionable now?
Ooops, let’s not forget that we need to understand our company’s overall business objectives and how to align our travel program to support those objectives. This may change your outlook on your data strategy, should your company objectives happen to change.
Let’s Get Analytical As buyers work through this process of reviewing and renewing their Phat Data, another exciting thing to look at in 2018 is taking a more analytical approach to your data strategy. We know it’s crucial that you’re telling the right story to the right people at the right time – we’ve said that for years. So 2018 may be the time to take that to the next level and expand the story to more What If? scenarios.
The new year will continue to see an uptick in suppliers providing more visualized reporting, so as the data is consumed the story starts to tell itself. More dynamic dashboards will allow decision makers to take a deeper dive into specific content that lets them look into more of these What If’s? What if we move more to advanced purchase? How would that impact the ratio of changes made? What if we moved from business class to coach on some routes? Or vice versa on other city pairs? The What If’s are endless.
There are also bigger picture factors to consider. Right now, we are experiencing a strong economy. But what if that changes? Are you prepared to provide the information to your leadership if the situation calls for you to reduce travel or change policy to help control costs? The Path to Wisdom Putting together a Phat Data strategy isn’t just about what you have done in the past; it’s about what you can, should and will likely do in the future. Predictive analytics is the name of the game, and the more data that is being aggregated and normalized for consumption only creates more opportunities for buyers to better understand future impacts to their programs and corporations.
In addition to more tools to help us visualize data, 2018 will also let us take a deeper dive into artificial intelligence and machine learning. We’ll discover more about how these technologies can impact our data and open up new avenues to collect more information about our travelers and our programs.
We’ll take a fresh look at the impacts of NDC and the prospects for capturing enhanced booking data. As more and more advancements in technology enter the managed travel space, they open up exciting new insights into our programs and give us more Phat Data than ever before to ponder.
If you are just starting out with a data strategy or are continuing the mission you have already begun, keep in mind that a focused approach to managing your travel program through data takes time and effort, but the possibilities are excitingly endless. Thus, continue to ask the So What? question of your data: I have this information – so what can I do with it and how is it actionable? And if you can’t answer those two things, ask yourself, Why do I need it? The data has to get you to wisdom!
There is a lot of opportunity for Phat Data in 2018. As we take our tried and true strategies and enhance them with new technologies or new experiences, we continue to elevate the managed travel program and the travel buyer’s role within an organization.
Our programs and our positions must become more strategic and less tactical. As buyers we must continue to bring value to our organizations and data is the tool we can use to help our programs evolve. So let’s spend the next eleven months exploring new data elements and celebrating the successes of our industry colleagues that use data to their advantage.
Happy New Year and cheers to Phat Data!
Jennifer Steinke is vice president Global Travel Experience at WHoldings, and an industry thought leader with over 27 years experience managing corporate travel. She holds an MBA plus Certified Corporate Travel Executive (CCTE) and Global Travel Professional (GTP) certifications from GBTA. Jennifer strives to deliver innovative and thought provoking ideas to the corporate travel industry.