SOURCE: CyberShift Inc.
As Airlines Unbundle More Services From Ticket Prices, Companies Find It Harder to Identify True Cost of Travel
PARSIPPANY, NJ–(Marketwire – June 30, 2010) – According to the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS), in 2009 the airline industry collected over $7 billion in ancillary fee revenue1. Gone are the days when the typical business traveler purchased an airline ticket and automatically received services such as on-board meals, checked baggage and entertainment at no additional charge. With the proliferation of ancillary fees forcing organizations to determine whether these costs are aligned with their corporate travel policies, many are turning to CyberShift’s award-winning Expense Management Solutions to manage this spend.
CyberShift Expense™ from CyberShift, a global provider of workforce management and expense management software and services, enables clients to capture and track these ancillary T&E fees. CyberShift has been at the forefront of travel management solutions, and, more recently, the growing trend in addressing the expensing of ancillary fee transactions. CyberShift has worked with clients to set-up additional expense types and categories that allow users to properly classify and charge their ancillary expenses. CyberShift’s best practice database, which is used for new client deployments, includes the pre-built setup for these fee categories — such as baggage, seat selection, upgrades, meals, Wi-Fi, and other expense categories. No additional setup is required; clients can “pick and choose” which of these expense types they wish to have enabled for their submitters.
CyberShift’s Senior Product Director, Expense Applications, Craig Fearon, said, “The issue of ancillary airline fees is huge and we anticipate that it will escalate as airlines seek to augment their revenue streams. Travel managers can rely on CyberShift today to provide a comprehensive solution. In addition, we are proactively working with our corporate charge card, online travel booking and travel management partners to bring to market enhanced solutions for this issue to provide improved data capture and ease of use for our users.”
As a market leader, CyberShift has been working with the corporate charge card vendors and recommending changes that will better classify these transactions as they come in on corporate card feeds.
CyberShift’s reporting functionality gives clients the ability to view what they have spent by expense type to better understand how much these ancillary fees are costing their organization. Armed with this information, travel managers can enter into more productive negotiations with preferred airline partners.
Fearon commented, “Our approach to the new challenge of ancillary airline fees is consistent with our role as a leader in the expense management market space and one more example of CyberShift’s commitment to clients.”
More information about CyberShift Expense can be accessed at: http://www.cybershift.com/Products/CyberShift_Expense_Software.asp
About CyberShift
CyberShift specializes in providing leading organizations with best-in-class workforce and employee spend-management solutions to reduce costs, mitigate compliance risk and increase productivity. Our solutions help organizations of all sizes address complex policies and increase the effectiveness of their workforce in delivering products or services to their customers every day. CyberShift’s comprehensive product suite is unique in providing multi-national capabilities for employee scheduling, time-and-attendance, contingent labor management, absence management, expense management and solutions for the mobile workforce. CyberShift manages over 1.5 million transactions daily through our highly secure SaaS delivery model, and is also available as an On Premise license, putting the power of choice in the hands of the customer. For more information, please call (877) 274-4381 or visit www.cybershift.com.
(1) http://www.bts.gov/press_releases/2010/bts021_10/html/bts021_10.html
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