Supplier analytics

This isn't just about managing a few trips; it's about a colossal financial commitment.

Global business travel spending is on a trajectory to reach an astonishing £1.6 trillion worldwide by 2028 (approximately $2 trillion), growing at an annual rate of 6%. Each individual business trip in 2024 contributes significantly to this sum, averaging £666.98 (approximately $833.72).

Given that travel and expense (T&E) is typically the second-largest controllable expense, right after salaries and benefits, it demands rigorous, strategic attention. However, a critical challenge arises when organisations engage in supplier negotiations: they often lack the comprehensive, unbiased data essential to truly understand their market share, benchmark against industry standards, and effectively leverage their substantial spend. This absence of objective insights can leave companies at a significant disadvantage, missing out on crucial savings and optimal value from their suppliers.

This is where Emburse Reshop steps in, transforming travel programmes from a cost center into a profit driver. Beyond its core function of automated rebooking, Reshop offers robust analytics that provide unparalleled insights, empowering your finance and travel teams to secure better deals and optimise supplier relationships.

The Challenge: Negotiating in the Dark

When you're preparing to negotiate a new contract with a major airline or hotel chain, a clear and comprehensive understanding of your travel spend is crucial. However, many organisations find themselves at a significant disadvantage because they lack this critical insight. Without a full picture of your actual travel volume, it becomes nearly impossible to make informed decisions. How can you confidently negotiate better rates if you don't know the full value of your business to the supplier?

This lack of visibility creates several problems. First, you can't accurately compare your negotiated rates against current market prices to see if they are still competitive. Are you getting the best value, or is a competitor's offer a better deal? Without data, it's impossible to tell. Second, you can't verify if your current suppliers are even honoring the agreements you've already made. Are they consistently providing the rates and benefits you've negotiated, or are there hidden fees and higher prices sneaking into your invoices? You might be missing out on significant savings without even knowing it.

Often, companies rely on limited or biased data, sometimes provided directly by the suppliers they're negotiating with. This is a bit like letting the opposing team keep score during a game. The information you receive may not present a full, unbiased picture, leading to missed opportunities and reduced negotiating power. To truly gain an upper hand, you must base your strategy on objective, independently verified data that gives you a complete view of your travel ecosystem. This empowers you to secure more favorable terms and ensure cost-effectiveness for your business.

Emburse Reshop's Analytical Arsenal: Illuminating Your Spend

Emburse Reshop is the cornerstone of the Emburse Travel Analytics offering, delivering significant ROI by providing automated tools and services for corporate air and hotel travel management. Its analytical capabilities go far beyond simple rebooking:

1. Continuous Contract Auditing

Emburse Reshop provides always-on, automated auditing technology that meticulously reviews every booking. This ensures that your static or dynamic negotiated fares and rates are consistently available and correctly applied. This proactive reassurance allows you to spot discrepancies with booked rates, inventory availability, and your supplier agreements, preventing potential policy violations before they occur. It's a critical tool for detecting instances where flight bookings do not reflect the terms of your contract, allowing you to secure resolutions for cost discrepancies with your partners.

2. Supplier Performance Tracking & Benchmarking

Relying upon information provided by suppliers for performance analysis can create a considerable blind spot in your travel and expenses (T&E) strategy. A truly effective programme requires independent, objective analysis.

With a solution that provides unbiased data, you can effectively monitor and benchmark your negotiated agreements against market standards and the performance of other companies. This is precisely what Emburse Reshop offers. It provides the objective data necessary to eliminate your reliance upon potentially biased information from suppliers.

For air travel, a key metric is the Lowest Qualified Fare (LQF), which accurately measures the value of your air programme by comparing your negotiated fares to the lowest comparable fares available on the open market. For hotels, it allows you to compare how your programme is doing against market standards and other organisations.

This independent measurement empowers you to understand if and how often you are truly securing the best price, affording you the leverage you need to optimise your travel spend and negotiate with confidence.

3. Actionable Analytics & Insights

The true value of a data-driven approach lies not just in a report, but in the power to act. With online dashboards, the insights from Emburse Reshop are instantly available, transforming raw data into a real-time command centre for your travel programme.

These dashboards provide a comprehensive view of critical metrics, including potential savings, realised savings, and the performance of your negotiated agreements over time. Finance teams can now drill down into specific spend categories, identify emerging trends, and make proactive, data-driven decisions. For example, you can analyse spending by department, location, or category to spot anomalies or determine precise spend volume with a particular vendor—a crucial insight for negotiating more favourable rates.

This level of detail moves your team beyond simple reconciliation, empowering you to actively manage costs, optimise your programme, and strategically drive savings.

The Power of Unbiased Data: Your Unparalleled Negotiating Leverage

The true game-changer lies in the unbiased, third-party perspective that Emburse Reshop offers. While a company's Travel Management Company (TMC) might offer its own reshopping services, they often do not provide detailed analytics into this activity, making it difficult to capture actionable insights. TMCs generally don’t want to highlight discrepancies in the rates they are offering.

Emburse Reshop provides savings AND analytics. By demonstrating the ability to shift business easily, for example, if lower rates are found at similar properties nearby, you enhance your negotiating leverage and buying power with suppliers.

This objective data gives you a powerful tool to:

• Shape your travel policy.
• Identify new savings opportunities.
• Renegotiate terms to account for modified travel volumes and maintain negotiated contracts.
• Secure better rates and terms with confidence, backed by verifiable data.

Ensuring Trust and Compliance

Beyond savings, Emburse understands the importance of security and compliance. Emburse Travel Analytics is GDPR Ready and Privacy Shield Compliant, ensuring data protection for your global operations. Furthermore, the Emburse platform is certified for security and privacy, including SOC1, SOC2, PCI DSS, ISO 27001, and ISO 27701. The system also assists with tax regulation compliance, offering features like unlimited cloud receipt storage for audits and VAT tracking for accurate multi-country expense reporting. With an estimated 5% of revenues typically lost to fraud worldwide, and expense fraud accounting for 14.5% of all uncovered fraud, Emburse Reshop's automated auditing plays a crucial role in reducing wasteful spending and enhancing compliance.

Future-Proof Your Travel Programme

By leveraging Emburse Reshop's robust analytics, you don't just achieve immediate cost savings; you also future-proof your travel programme, building strategic relationships with suppliers based on transparency and data. This allows your organisation to maximise the value of each business trip, drive sustained business impact, and transform your travel spend into a strategic advantage.

Ready to turn your travel data into your strongest negotiation tool? Discover how Emburse Reshop can empower your organization with unparalleled insights and control.