The lies we believe in spend management

Alissa Merlino, Sr. Director, Global Solutions Engineering, joins Miriam and Chad on this episode for a conversation around spend management - from a slightly different angle. Alissa constantly has conversations with travel managers, travel buyers, and spend management vendors and sometimes those conversations lead to debunking misconceptions. On this episode, Alissa shares some of the more popular misconceptions around T&E spend management and what her take is on the truth. 

Learn more by visiting https://www.bcdtravel.com or https://www.linkedin.com/company/bcd-travel/

Transcript

Intro:

Welcome to Connections with BCD Travel, an ongoing conversation about the modern day travel program, the impact of technology, and how travel buyers can take control and drive change. What are we waiting for? Let's start connecting.

Miriam Moscovici:

Hello. Welcome back to the podcast. I'm Miriam Moscovici. I lead the partnerships and intelligence team here at BCD Travel.

Chad Lemon:

And I'm Chad Lemon. I work on digital strategy and advancement at BCD.

Miriam Moscovici:

Chad, today I'd like to talk about our mailbag. We have gotten some messages from our listeners.

Chad Lemon:

Oh, yeah. Okay.

Miriam Moscovici:

And I thought it was just worth giving a recap. We have gotten lots of kudos and congrats on your podcast and people enjoying it. We've gotten several folks write in letting us know that they listen to us while they work out. Yep.

Chad Lemon:

Definitely popular in the morning treadmill routines.

Miriam Moscovici:

Yeah, I guess. And we did get an email about using the word, "leakage" and forceful support of the word, "leakage" because it's negative and leakage is negative, and so we shouldn't shy away from using that word, "leakage." What else?

Chad Lemon:

We got a really great message recently about the NDC episode with Thane Jackson.

Miriam Moscovici:

That's right.

Chad Lemon:

And the person just, sending kudos, but said it really gave context around the subject that they keep hearing about but didn't know about. And I thought just the way they phrased that was, it was really kind of cool to hear that we're helping bring context to a lot of things happening in the industry.

Miriam Moscovici:

Yep. Okay. Well, we do read those messages. We love them. And I thought maybe for our listeners we could make a request. Years ago, I don't know, 15, 18, 20 years ago when I was a travel manager-

Chad Lemon:

When you were 10. 10 years old at that point, right? Yeah.

Miriam Moscovici:

I was younger.

Chad Lemon:

Exactly.

Miriam Moscovici:

I used to do this survey with our road warriors, and what I used to ask them starting around this time of year and leading into the fall, was asking our road warriors, really anyone that travels, "What is the best airport for shopping and what in particular is good in those locations?" Is there a special amazing cheese in this terminal in the Amsterdam airport you should go try out or find? Or is there an as not yet discovered sausage type in Frankfurt airport that I need to go try? So I'd love to hear from folks what their favorite airports are for shopping. I think a lot of us are thinking about as summer ends, kids back to school, it's conference season, we're getting back on the road a lot and we're heading into the holidays. And so, I know Minneapolis has always been a really popular US domestic airport because they've got a pretty decent shopping.

Chad Lemon:

Shopping, yeah.

Miriam Moscovici:

So yeah, I'd just love to hear from our listeners if they've got some unique places or recommendations on what they think is the best airport for airport shopping.

Chad Lemon:

I love that. Yes, please write in bcdtravel.com/podcast. The form is right there. As I was listening to you, Miriam, I thought, "Okay, what is my favorite thing?" And it is hands down, easily, the Cuban coffee from Papi's in Terminal T at the Atlanta Airport in the US. Hands down, my favorite pick me up. You've got to try it.

Miriam Moscovici:

Okay.

Chad Lemon:

Yeah, got to try it. It's so good.

Miriam Moscovici:

It's on my list.

Chad Lemon:

It's so good. Cuban coffee from there, perfect. It'll get you going.

Miriam Moscovici:

All right. Write in. Let us know.

Chad Lemon:

Yeah, yeah, write in. Let us know. Yeah. Love that idea.

Miriam Moscovici:

And you know what my favorite thing is about this podcast, Chad?

Chad Lemon:

What? Tell me.

Miriam Moscovici:

That after over two seasons, we still have several guests that choose to return, come back time after time, and give us updates on what's going on in their space and we get to hear from them again.

Chad Lemon:

Yeah, I agree. And this episode just so happens to be one of those situations and I'm looking forward to it because I think this is our guest's third or fourth visit to the podcast. So always excited to talk to her.

Miriam Moscovici:

Exactly. And we're excited to welcome back Alissa Merlino, senior director with our Global Solutions Engineering Team. And Alissa is a T&E spend management expert, which is great because we're talking about spend management, but from a slightly different angle today.

Chad Lemon:

Yeah, I was just at GBTA with Alissa and I know that she's come to the studio with a list of topics after she was finished with the conference. So I say, let's do it.

Miriam Moscovici:

Alissa, welcome back to the podcast.

Alissa Merlino:

It's great to be back, guys. It's such a fun time to hang out with you and to take a really casual view on what T&E spend is like right now.

Chad Lemon:

Well, as I said, you and I were both just at GBTA and I saw you having non-stop conversations. Before we jump into today's topic, I'd love to get just a brief recap about the event from your point of view.

Alissa Merlino:

Yeah, Chad, it was a lot of fun. It was very busy, and I think the difference was, as you all know, I came from the meeting side of the house, so this was my fourth GBTA that I was at. And a significant amount of those GBTAs that I attended were either slightly post-pandemic or a year or two past. And what was great about this one is not only do we see current clients, prospective clients, but there was a definitive buzz. And part of that was we're looking at our clients and prospective clients, looking at how they are going to make the moves in a more sophisticated environment. So we've already stabilized our businesses. You're seeing transactions come back so it was definitely more fun. It wasn't just about how we're going to recover and the nervousness, but it felt like it was back to normal with more of an innovative spirit and touch to many of the events that we attended.

Chad Lemon:

Yeah, I totally agree. And now that you say that, I don't know that I heard one person talk about pandemic to me. It was like the first time I think that happened.

Alissa Merlino:

Which was amazing.

Chad Lemon:

Yeah, it was very welcome. Very, very welcome. Okay, well, being the resident spend management/BCD Pay expert, I think we might've given you that title, but I for sure believe it. I'm sure you talked about some of the new advancements, not only with BCD Pay, but also where this section of the business travel industry is going. Right?

Alissa Merlino:

We did. And again, when you're looking at the different topics that we were covering at GBTA, what we've looked at is again, the sophistication of what those conversations look like has changed. And part of it is because you're looking at different organizations that have entered into the spend management place. Not only did I have conversations with those clients that we know or some of the travel managers that are actually listening right now, but also the providers that they're looking at to work with.

So that could be anywhere from virtual payments to spend management or reconciliation places. And really, talking to those providers gave us a really interesting outlook and clarity to, I wouldn't even say it's noise necessarily, but some of the complex confusion that could be involved in spend management. Specifically, what we at BCD were talking about and felt like there was the most interest was overall automated reconciliation, our launch of corporate wallets, so that there's a unified view of all of the avenues of payments, so virtual pay, centralized cards, and what that allows our travel managers to do. So that was really exciting as well as some of just the overall strategy in a very flooded market right now.

Miriam Moscovici:

Okay. Alissa, as we were prepping for this podcast, you mentioned that you kept running into conversations where they weren't always accurate, right? There was a lot of misconceptions. So tell us about that.

Alissa Merlino:

And I think oftentimes we like to be a little more salacious and say, "The lies that you're believing in the market."

Chad Lemon:

Absolutely, yeah.

Alissa Merlino:

But truly, there are misconceptions because you think about it, if we start out with one or two providers in this space four years ago and now there are 20, there's going to be some confusion as well as, "How are you going to build that strategy and who is going to be involved in that?" So really what we think are some of the misconceptions that we saw at GBTA that we were talking through with our travel managers, the first really is that automated reconciliation will not save you money. So we have done several white papers on it where you're able to see the results, but if you break it down to the foundational level, let's say typically manual reconciliation takes anywhere from two to 10 days, so the average of that would be five days and then eight hours per day, you look at 40 hours times, let's call it $50 an hour. That ends up being $2,000 per month. Now in contrast, if we're doing an automated reconciliation within seven minutes, you take, again, I'm showing you math skills. Seven 60th times 50, which ends up being I believe $5, actually $5.83.

So when you take that concept and apply it to just basic math, that's what you would get. But truly, one of the case studies that we've made available on our client-facing public site, is that we had a client that went from 40 hours a month in automated reconciliation to just under two hours a month. Also, just some of the actions that we've taken have saved them over $15,000.

Chad Lemon:

Wow, okay. So it's fair to say lie number one, misconception number one: automated reconciliation won't save you time and money and Alissa Merlino on record: false.

Alissa Merlino:

False, correct.

Chad Lemon:

Got it. Okay.

Miriam Moscovici:

All right. What's next?

Alissa Merlino:

So the next lie that we're telling ourselves is that invoicing is easy to get. So that could mean you're just picking up your phone and calling your agent, or you're also looking in your tool, your online booking tool and can capture the invoice. But really, just to add some clarity and transparency, every TMC has multiple different back offices, whether that's how each country operates or what the standard is. And it's not just unique to BCD, it's everyone. And part of the reason we developed digital invoice management is because regardless of the back office, you have a digital copy of your invoice, which also ties back to how we're able to make that available immediately. So within seconds, you've got a copy of your invoice versus the back and forth, the manual operation. And what that does really is, it allows you to have all invoice data at your fingertips, which we are a data-driven market now.

Miriam Moscovici:

Before you go on to this next lie, I just want to touch a little bit on the trend I'm seeing with pay and the work that we're doing with some of these pay capabilities. When you look at the old version of transactions, what we used to call a transaction, it was pretty much just your booking details, what you booked and how you booked it and how much it costs, et cetera. And now with some of the advancements with pay, there's just this hyper enrichment of these bookings now. Isn't that what you're spending a lot of your time doing is going out to all these sources and pulling in credit card data, payment data, real tax data, et cetera, that you're pulling in and invoice images so that you're enriching these bookings way beyond what they started as? Is that kind of what you're doing here, is just sort of taking the booking data to the next level, continuing to enrich it with payment related objects?

Alissa Merlino:

Yeah. And I think if we can frame it just a different way right now, because that is true. But if you think about it, and I know a lot of the listeners out there will agree, travel and meetings, were all very soft verticals. It was based on, "This is how we feel like it should be done. This is the behavior we're seeing," but to actually have facts and figures behind that behavior allows for the change that you want to see at the program level to translate well to let's say, the C-suite on financial changes that need to be made.

So when you're looking at booking detail, it was great. So we can see which city pairings are really important, what providers are being utilized. But how do we define that change by forms of financials? And I think that's what we're driving more towards. The more you enrich data, the better view you have, which allows you to advocate on your program's behalf. And in addition to that, I think overall, that's where that's seeing more of the trend and the total insights, not just, "Okay, this is what the book data looks like," but, "How can we move the needle on this behavior," and then ultimately it will save us in fraudulent charges or the way that the cards being used. Having program details and regulations at point of sale is going to start to, we talk about leakage, that's going to start to capture that leakage, but also define what avenues we need to take in order for that not to happen.

Chad Lemon:

Super interesting point, Miriam. I'm glad you brought that up. Okay, Alissa, you know me, I love a spicy topic. So I want to get back to another lie or misconception. What else did you notice during those conversations you were having?

Alissa Merlino:

The biggest point that I want to drive home is when we were talking to those who were attending GBTA, but also it just in general, what we're noticing is feeling disconnected to the final result, right? T&E spend is not my area of expertise-

Chad Lemon:

Yeah, absolutely.

Alissa Merlino:

... or not something that I should be invested in. What we're finding is the more you know about T&E spend management as somebody who is working at the program level within a procurement team or within a financials team, wherever you sit within your organization, your industry knowledge, the way that you have seen that business is being handled by others in comparison, some of the providers out there, keeping yourself in the loop will allow you to help look at change with risk-adverse organizations. And I think that's really important because we have many teammates out there, many travel managers who are working within organizations that would love to take some leaps, but they need to be calculated, they need to have a lot of detail behind it. And our travel managers really are the key to that because they can influence and give that human perspective on the analytics and spend data that we're able to provide.

Miriam Moscovici:

And that only they can, frankly. I mean there are insights that really only a travel manager can bring to the table about how these tools and these choices affect the human being, travelers on the ground, actually executing travel and doing their business on the road and how that affects just general behavior over time. I think that's, for me, I couldn't agree with you more. I think the travel manager might not be accountable for the purchase and the choice of this type of facility within their company, but they're almost the advocate of the traveler in a lot of ways in ensuring that the program stays whole and that the T&E policy and the T&E process, the expense process, payment process, supports those broader goals of the program. So I couldn't agree with you more.

Alissa Merlino:

And truly, who doesn't like change when it's going to save money or time? So you always look good when you pick some small action items that will definitely be visible to your leadership.

Chad Lemon:

Listen, as you were going through your list, I was, again, thinking of myself recently on a trip and I couldn't help but realize that even what you were saying, they link to each other, right? It's all related in this big spend management space in that, I had to wait for my hotel invoice to come. It was on a personal card, I was going to be reimbursed. I had to wait for it to come. It didn't arrive for whatever reason, had to call the hotel, wait for them to send it to me, had to wait for that before I could submit my expense report. It took days and days and days out of my time when really, all of this could have been automated for me.

Alissa Merlino:

Correct.

Chad Lemon:

And not only saved me time, everything, but made me happier as an employee because I don't have to worry about it. Just really interesting listening to you thinking about how it relates to me as the traveler.

Alissa Merlino:

And it is relatable because I come on here and talk about spend management like I'm an expert, but truth be told, my expenses are always late and I always misplace receipts. And I think part of it is that because we have digital invoice management, it comes right into our tool. I'm able to pull those invoices and not give a care to thinking about how I've got to call the hotel again because I've misplaced the hard copy somewhere. So it's not just applicable from a program standpoint, but from an individual standpoint. It's good to hear you say that you're understanding the value too.

Miriam Moscovici:

Okay, Alissa, I love that list, but now I want to ask you to make a new list for our listeners. Who do you want to hear from? What type of program, what type of listener should be picking up the phone or sending an email to you and saying, "I need to know more about pay and what you can offer?"

Alissa Merlino:

Yeah, those are good takeaways. Miriam. I think if you're feeling overwhelmed with the options that are out there in the market and don't know where to start, please reach out to us. Also, if you want to implement a comprehensive virtual pay program, like if you have unmanaged spend or unmanageable travelers like we do, like Chad and I are-

Chad Lemon:

Right.

Alissa Merlino:

... please contact us or your program manager. And then finally for me, I think if you might not be ready for the change because you have a risk-adverse organization, there are ways that you can educate your team on what that spend management program could look like. We have a website. You search BCD Pay, it comes up as a first search result. There are videos there, white papers, really helpful aids and visual details on how it works and why it works and it could be the first step to really educating the entire organization on what the change is needed.

Miriam Moscovici:

BCD Pay is a collection of solutions and services in the category. And so you as a listener, you might just need to take a look at what are all the things involved in a good payment and expense program, and maybe there's one or two things you just want to know more about. It's not a comprehensive all or nothing. It's a selection of tools and solutions at your disposal.

Alissa Merlino:

And I think it is a really good question, Miriam, because we've also, not only that, there have been products or tools that are going to be more helpful to a travel program than others.

Miriam Moscovici:

Right.

Alissa Merlino:

It can be customized that way. But we also talk to organizations who have already chosen their TMC partner and they've come to us outside of that knowing the capabilities we have to work with BCD Pay and the solutions in a separate agreement. So that's the trend that we're seeing as well. So it's not just, and I think part of it's because we do know the travel industry so well and other spend management companies out there know spend management, but haven't been able to apply the right intelligence when it comes to travel programming. So these are things to think about and look at, "What are my challenges as an organization and do we have a product that applies to that," and getting down to those details.

Chad Lemon:

Okay, Alissa, last question for you. What's the one thing you want our listeners to know about spend management?

Alissa Merlino:

I think the last thing I want our listeners to know about spend management, I want to relate it back to your personal financial journey.

Chad Lemon:

Oh, no.

Alissa Merlino:

I would say in my early years, I would stick my head in the sand. If I didn't know it existed, then it didn't exist. That's a really good way of doing things until you want to advance your life, your career, your organization, and part of it is, if you have your details and it even seems scary, we will walk alongside you in that and so basically reach out. We want to be your advocate on behalf of your finances for your organization.

Chad Lemon:

I love how Alissa can take a somewhat intimidating topic like spend management in corporate travel and make it, I don't know, dare I say, a fun conversation to talk about and learn.

Miriam Moscovici:

I agree, and I hope that Alissa will return in another three or six months and give us an update on what's new in her world and catch up on some more myths or lies.

Chad Lemon:

You know me, like I said before, I love a spicy podcast topic. So debunking some of the lies and mistruths that appear in the spend management space was great but that's all for this episode. If you have feedback for us, head to bcdtravel.com/podcast and let us know your thoughts.

Outro:

Thank you for connecting with us. BCD Travel helps companies travel smart and achieve more. We drive program adoption, cost savings, and talent retention through digital experiences that simplify business travel. Learn more about the topics you heard on this episode by visiting bcdtravel.com/podcast.