Corporate Travel Management (CTM) has enhanced its global technology suite to include a new global approval tool, CTM Approve, which will be available to CTM customers in early 2022.
Built entirely on CTM’s proprietary technology, the suite of tools includes a new global approval system, CTM Approve, and enhanced global portal and profile tools. The suite captures global PNR data from multiple sources to feed CTM’s risk management systems, allowing for duty of care no matter where their travellers are.
“We know that having visibility into travel in one place will be vital for our customers to meet duty of care requirements in a post-Covid environment,” said Mike Kubasik, CTM’s global chief technology officer. “It extends CTM’s global capabilities and client solutions in response to that environment, and – as international travel begins to increase – creates a targeted solution for travel managers in need of a global view.”
A recent CTM business travel survey found the top priority for travel programmes in 2022 is travel risk, safety, and wellbeing, with nearly 80 per cent of respondents choosing it as their top focus.
CTM’s technology suite can source global PNR data anywhere in CTM’s 100+ markets within minutes. The suite also covers multiple countries.
“As an example, with a large global client we are sourcing and leveraging data from 25+ countries to enable a standardised and globally consistent approval process,” Kubasik shared.
Because of CTM’s proprietary tech stack and global development hubs, the global technology suite works “out of the box” for global companies with travellers booking or flying from anywhere in the world. Owning the end-to-end process of the entire technology suite also means that CTM isn’t reliant on third parties to deliver ongoing feature upgrades, enhancements, and fixes.
Launching in early 2022, the new CTM Approve is the pre-trip approval system for global travel managers who want multi-layered approval control. Within CTM Approve, CTM collects PNR data, runs it through a single approval instance, and sends out approval notifications to a client’s selected employees. CTM Approve provides a single global view of all approvals anywhere in CTM’s 100+ countries, including the Americas, Europe, Asia, and Australia/New Zealand.
CTM Approve shows a holistic view of the approval workflow process from booking to final verdict (approved/denied) with relevant statistical information for each category.
Additionally, CTM’s global profile system integrates global HR feeds for centralised client access to all employee profiles in one tool. The tool can also integrate with the online booking tool (OBT) of choice for the client, including CTM’s own Lightning OBT. The profile system also works for both online and offline bookings, keeping all booking types in one place.
With CTM’s global portal, global travel managers can log in to and use a single global portal across all regions. Risk management information is presented on a global interactive map. CTM’s global portal is available to clients using CTM wholly-owned locations globally.
“These solutions are part of a larger global strategy and an ongoing commitment to build proprietary technology for our customers, and in response to more multinational customers looking to work with us across multiple regions,” noted Kubasik.
