American Express Launch Benchmarking Solution for Analyzing Corporate Card Spending

This new solution is initially being made available to approximately 150 of American Expresss global and multinational corporate clients; together these companies represent over $30 Billion in T&E spend. Global Card Benchmarking enables American Express clients to compare their actual T&E spend with aggregated data from their peers in the form of actionable business metrics. The first release provides airline and car rental spend for North America and Europe and hotel information worldwide. This self-service benchmarking analysis solution is part of the suite of American Express @ Work, the Web-based account-servicing and reporting platform, and enables companies to: - Identify and evaluate savings opportunities through peer group comparisons - Track relevant business metrics to monitor and report T&E costs over time - Improve forecasting accuracy and the budget planning process - Validate travel policy and investment decisions - Communicate T&E program performance more effectively World Class Performance Drivers Implementing world-class cost cutting initiatives is only half the battle, successful travel expense managers also need to measure their performance. Benchmarks offer external validation of how travel expense management programs are really doing and a barometer to compare their performance levels and practices to other companies. In the last few years procurement professionals have introduced scorecards to the travel industry for use as an internal metric to measure performance. Global Card Benchmarking allows clients to take that one step further and look beyond their own company to compare their expense management programs to what is actually happening out in the industry as a whole. Critical Data Necessary to Make Better Decisions Historically benchmarking has been done mostly on an ad-hoc basis either by a company or third-party vendor and the process was costly and extremely time consuming. Global Card Benchmarking provides a timely, consistent and cost effective way to assess the performance of expense management programs. This solution transforms static spend data into dynamic, relevant reports that identify and quantify T&E cost savings opportunities. As travel management becomes more procurement driven, a disciplined approach is required to evaluate program effectiveness. Benchmarking provides external validation and delivers performance metrics necessary to measure success. The depth and breadth of information provided allows clients to model scenarios to predict how changes in supplier or travel policy might affect cost savings in the long run. It also demonstrates how a clients travel program compares to other companies so they can make better T&E purchasing and policy decisions. Knowledge is Negotiating Power Benchmarking information is provided for air, hotel, car rental and general expense management metrics categories. The data can be segmented to reflect information for a particular peer group aggregated by industry, similar spending levels or other criteria. Information can also be broken out by geographic region or country, flexible time periods (year, quarter or month) and converted into over 200 currencies. Global Card Benchmarking enables a company to view not only their fares but also aggregated peer fares for the same travel patterns. For example, a client can see the average fares paid by peer groups for travel between New Yorks JFK Airport and Londons Heathrow Airport right down to carrier, class and fare type flown on that route.