Automating Airline Corporate Travel Programmes
How can airlines simplify business operations, integrate account information and analyze results of operational changes?
The automation of an airline’s business trip management goes beyond merely substituting spreadsheets with computer programs or implementing online approval processes. It requires a systematic method for detecting manual processes, dealing with scattered information and evaluating the impact of changes in operations.
As corporate travel requirements evolve, airlines may also need to rethink how their distribution processes support changing business needs. Explore how airline corporate distribution is evolving and why existing approaches may need to adapt.
The first question to address is what corporate processes an airline should select for automation and how to assess if the selected process is paying back.
1. Map the Existing Corporate Programme Workflow
Before they make decisions about automation capabilities, it is important for airlines to have an understanding of how their corporate programmes function today. The corporate sales, contract administration, booking support, and finance and servicing departments may be operating independently, with their own different working processes in place. With disconnected processes in action, this can lead to inefficient delays, repeat work, and risk of incorrect information being used.
Airlines should draw up a corporate programme lifecycle chart:
Account creation → Signing of contracts → Management of traveller accounts → Ticketing → Getting necessary approvals done → Providing services → Evaluating the performance
During the various stages of the lifecycle of a corporate programme, it is necessary to take note of the various manual processes that may take place, the systems used, the information exchanged and the bottlenecks faced at the different stages. As an example, in case of a corporate agreement changing, figure out how the changes are communicated and implemented in the ticketing processes.
This analysis will help to understand where airlines would benefit most from the implementation of processes related to automation.
2. Prioritise Automation Based on Business Impact
Some work tasks may be simplified or automated while others still require full cooperation from employees. Issues to consider include how often such processes take place, how much effort is needed to perform them, what damage can be done in case they are performed with mistakes or delayed, and whether the operations affect other tasks.
Updating employee profiles may be one of the candidates for successful automation since it constitutes an automated process. On the contrary, tweaking contracts takes much deliberation as the outcome of changes in the contracts may affect negotiations or booking process. Corporate performance analysis requires integration of information taken from different systems.
The process of prioritising tasks allows airlines to differentiate between processes fit for automation and those which need more advanced technology or integration of data gathered from several systems.
The goal is to start with simple tasks with a high impact level and then progress to more complicated situations.
3. Connect Corporate Accounts, Agreements and Booking Workflows
The usefulness of access to the corporate account, agreements, eligibility of travellers, booking conditions and history increases when linked to the same corporate relationship. For instance, if an airline changes the terms of agreement for some routes, the account team must ensure that the new terms are included in the respective booking process. Otherwise, if contract management and booking processes are based on different documents, workers will need to check the information manually. As a result, reporting teams may have to put in additional efforts to understand the booking activities according to the new agreement.
Consistent agreement records can also support more informed renewal decisions. Airlines can explore data-driven strategies for corporate contract renewals to understand how agreement performance can inform future negotiations.
It is not always necessary to replace every airline system. Depending on the existing technological landscape, airlines can integrate some of their systems, standardize data definitions, and define the responsibility for workflow.
The best course of action depends on the current situation with architecture, integrations, and limitations.
4. Introduce Automation in Controlled Stages
Once priority processes and dependencies are understood, airlines can introduce automation through a phased implementation.
Phase 1: Standardise workflows. Document existing procedures, clarify ownership and remove unnecessary steps before digitisation. Automating an inconsistent process can simply reproduce its inefficiencies.
Phase 2: Digitise routine activities. Begin with suitable workflows such as corporate account creation, employee profile maintenance, notifications and standard approval routing. Establish which activities can proceed automatically and which require human review.
Phase 3: Connect relevant information. Improve access to account, agreement and booking data. Define how changes are communicated, exceptions handled and records reconciled.
Phase 4: Monitor performance. Introduce reporting to track account activity, workflow delays, booking patterns and agreement utilisation. Establish meaningful indicators before expanding the initiative.
Phase 5: Extend decision support. Once processes and data are sufficiently reliable, explore analytics and AI capabilities to identify unusual patterns, prioritise accounts for review or highlight potential commercial opportunities.
Advanced analytics cannot compensate for unreliable data or unclear process ownership. A strong operational foundation must come first. Airlines looking to improve specific workflows can also explore corporate travel policy management automation for further insights into digital policy and approval processes.
5. Define How Success Will Be Measured
Before starting a project, airlines have to develop a baseline and track performance against that baseline. Some of the indicators worth looking at include time spent updating accounts and amending contracts, number of manual actions performed during the workflow and how often the records turned out to be incomplete, reworked or wrongly processed.
Teams may also analyze their processing speed: e.g. time it takes to check if the agreement terms are valid, get the corporate account reports and compare booking activities against the targets.
The above-mentioned indicators should highlight the airline’s business model and the quality of available data.
It is crucial to separate operational outcomes from commercial results. While faster contract processing signals better efficiency, it doesn’t mean that the airline earned more money. The same goes for changes in contract utilization: they should be analyzed in relation to route demand, terms of the agreements and profitability of the account.
Separating measurements allows airlines to see the processes where the automation works and processes that need to be improved.
6. Address Integration, Governance and Adoption Early
When trying to implement automation, airlines may run into some challenges within their already-established environment. They’ve got their older software that may restrict integration possibilities, their different terms in usage of data, and the possibility for them to stick to their good, old spreadsheets if the new process proves to be difficult enough to implement.
Three things need to be considered from the very beginning:
- Integration : define if information is to be exchanged across systems and how any issues arising during the process can be resolved.
- Governance : determine who is responsible for record ownership, contract changes, access rights, and approval rules.
- Adoption : engage people throughout the whole process, properly train them, and gather their feedback during the implementation.
A well-planned pilot testing of a limited number of customers or processes can help validate the idea, identify problems, and improve the processes before implementation over the entire work.
7. Where ADO Corporate Portal Fits
The corporate portal of the Airline Distribution Optimizer (ADO) is offered to airlines that want to revamp their corporate distribution process in a more connected B2B environment.
For a broader understanding of the technology behind this approach, read our guide to corporate travel and B2B travel platforms and their role in airline distribution.
This solution can help airlines with account and agreement management, employee profile management, customizable policy approval workflows, booking management, various payment solutions, and reporting and analytics.
Thus, airlines with fragmented corporate management systems can understand how they can use the ADO solution to manage their account info, negotiated conditions and bookings in the same portal system.
The specific implementation process depends on the airline’s current software, business rules, integration needs, and business procedures.
Building a Sustainable Automation Strategy
Corporate travel programme automation is the process of transforming operations, and it goes beyond simply deploying a software solution. Airlines must examine existing operations, identify high-value opportunities, connect useful data and assess outcomes against meaningful benchmarks.
Once the process is well established, teams can start validating the actual benefits of this automation before moving on to other stages of the corporate programme life cycle.
What we want to do is put in place a model that enables routine operations to proceed in a unified way, makes it possible to see any exceptions and keeps airline professionals focused on those decisions that require commercial judgment.
