Egencia Customers Benefit from Data-Driven Product Design with Higher Adoption Rates among Business Travelers

BELLEVUE, Wash., July 18, 2016 /CNW/ -- As Egencia^® rolls out its global technology into the recently-acquired Orbitz for Business customer base, the Expedia business travel arm is seeing increased adoption rates for these new customers.

Orbitz for Business customers have seen their online adoption move from approximately 85% to over 95% after migrating to the new US Rail by Egencia offering released in May 2016. This parallels a similar trend seen in EU countries, where Egencia has average adoption rates above 95%. Egencia attributes such high adoption rates to its beautiful design and consistent execution for interactive elements to look, behave and be found in the same way repeatedly.

Michael Gulmann, Vice President Global Product and Marketing at Egencia attributes this success to the science behind building product. "The key to having a successful travel program is to ensure that you're delivering an excellent, intuitive customer experience. Asking employees of today's workforce to use corporate solutions that aren't user friendly, and have been built on antiquated technology just doesn't work. We've found that by creating a familiar, consumer-like experience, online adoption happens naturally and compliance follows."

Egencia approaches product development with a philosophy based on the scientific method. Rather than predict the future, the company tests and learns a path to what product works best for business travelers. The design experience has three tenets:

1. Each page has only one function: search, book, checkout or pay.
2. Each page is as simple as possible.
3. Many pages tested through eye-tracking technology and user interviews.

"At Egencia we're able to leverage the consumer behavior patterns from the larger Expedia, Inc. family of websites. By using the data from more than 189 billion rows of consumer behavior data, we are able to come up with theories on how to make the online experience better for our customers. We test those new experiences against our travelers' clicks and usage of the platform in order to improve everyday on an already remarkable experience," said Gulmann.

Features such as "Last Mile" in the Egencia app leverages data to improve travel programs. The feature integrates with the Uber and Citymapper API. Since its release in February 2016, it has generated more than half a million interactions with more than one-third of users going for transportation mode comparison.  According to the Egencia^® Business Travel and Technology study, over 50% of US business travelers have used a shared economy service, despite only one in four detailing that using these services is permitted and encouraged. In order to help the Travel Managers gain visibility and transparency into this bourgeoning traveler service, Egencia now allows companies to set Uber in or out of policy, and consolidate the booking data in reporting.

Egencia has also infused proprietary data-driven technologies to improve its customers' travel program performance. Unveiled today, the Egencia^® Travel Intelligence home page provides a summary overview of a customer's travel program, with key metrics and interactive graphs on travel spend, online adoption, supplier performance and program compliance, and drill-down capabilities to near-real time transactional data. Customers also have access to a comprehensive view of a specific program metric with detailed data and charts, key insights based on the data, including recommended actions to improve performance.

Swing by our booth at the Global Business Travel Association (GBTA) event in Denver, Colorado to see these features live at booth #1442. Or follow along virtually on our blog or Twitter for updates live from the show.    

About Egencia

Egencia makes business travel better by making it more connected and complete. Egencia puts travelers at the heart of business travel, continuously supporting them with solutions that are more engaging and effective. Driven by consumer insights and technology investments from parent company, Expedia, Inc., Egencia connects everything travelers need - content, technology, service and reporting - in one place. Egencia provides services in more than 65 countries. To connect with Egencia, visit http://www.egencia.com, Twitter or our blog.

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SOURCE Egencia

Ashley Keller, Senior Global Marketing Communications Manager, Egencia; Email: [email protected]; Office: 425-679-7288, http://www.expediacorporate.com