ITM Sustainability Showcase Webinar: Embracing AI and Sustainability in Travel Management with Keesup Choe, CEO, PredictX

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About this Webinar

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In the dynamic realm of corporate travel management, sustainability has surged as a critical focus, driven by global net-zero commitments. At the ITM Sustainability Showcase 2024, Keesup Choe, CEO of PredictX, delivered an insightful session exploring how AI-powered tools are revolutionizing sustainability practices in travel. He shed light on how travel managers can effectively navigate the increasing demand for sustainability with limited resources by leveraging innovative technologies like internal carbon pricing (ICP) and AI agents.

This webinar was not just a presentation of ideas but a demonstration of tangible, actionable strategies for achieving corporate sustainability goals while simplifying the complexities of data management. Keesup's session offered an engaging dive into real-world challenges and solutions, including predictive analytics, AI-driven support, and tools to align travel operations with net-zero targets.

Agenda

1. Sustainability in Travel: The Accelerating Urgency
   Keesup outlined the growing pressure on travel managers to deliver measurable sustainability outcomes, driven by corporate net-zero pledges and heightened board-level scrutiny. He emphasized the importance of translating complex CO2 data into understandable, actionable insights.
2. Internal Carbon Pricing (ICP): Making CO2 Tangible
   • Explained how ICP converts CO2 metrics into monetary values, making sustainability more relatable for stakeholders.
   • Demonstrated dashboards that integrate travel spend with CO2 costs, enabling intuitive management of sustainability budgets.
3. Steps to Sustainability Success
   PredictX has developed a structured approach to help companies:
   • Measure and Budget: Align sustainability metrics with organizational goals.
   • Monitor with Predictive Analytics: Use forecasts to anticipate overspend and align with future travel trends.
   • Actively Manage: Move beyond reporting to actively reducing carbon footprints and influencing business travel practices.
4. AI-Powered Sustainability Management
   • Introduced “Sam,” an AI-powered sustainability analyst within the PredictX platform.
   • Showed how Sam assists in monitoring Internal Carbon Pricing (ICP), forecasting budgets, and identifying savings opportunities.
   • Demonstrated real-world applications, such as shifting from air travel to rail for specific routes to achieve cost and CO2 reductions.
5. Integrating Complex Data Ecosystems
   Keesup addressed the challenges of integrating multiple travel management company (TMC) systems, expense platforms, and direct booking data. PredictX uses "AI swarms" to consolidate, normalize, and correct data, ensuring accuracy in sustainability reporting and audits.
6. Practical Takeaways and Next Steps
   • A step-by-step guide for initiating a sustainability-focused travel program.
   • Resources available for download to help organizations start their journey.

Summary

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This webinar highlighted how AI and predictive analytics are redefining the way companies approach sustainability in corporate travel. By simplifying data complexities and providing actionable insights, PredictX empowers travel managers to become strategic advisors in their organizations’ sustainability journeys.

Sustainability is no longer a future goal—it's a present-day imperative for businesses worldwide. With the right tools and strategies, travel managers can confidently align their programs with corporate net-zero commitments while optimizing efficiency. If you’re ready to transform your travel management approach, explore PredictX’s website for in-depth resources, insights, and tools. Better yet, book a free demo to see how AI-powered data insights can drive sustainable outcomes in your travel program. For further discussion and expertise, connect directly with Keesup Choe on LinkedIn and join the conversation on shaping a greener future for corporate travel.

Video Transcription

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Keesup: Hello I'm Keesup Choe, CEO of PredictX. I'm really excited to speak to all of you. We've been working in the travel space and especially focused on sustainability for quite some time. And what's interesting is that over the last 24 months, the urgency of the travel managers that we work with with regard to sustainability has exploded. And probably the last 12 months, it's really quite a crescendo. And speaking to some of them, some of the reasons why it's accelerated has to do with the net zero commitment. So many companies publicly made a net zero commitment all around 2020. And if you know how these work, the boards of these companies have board directors who are responsible for the ESG and sustainability at that company level. And I was looking at the calendar thinking, I have to start shopping for Christmas. You know, the Christmas date is just exploding towards me, I think these directors have now woken up thinking, we made the commitment in 2020, and now we're almost halfway there or a third of the way there. What have we done? And questioning the sustainability team, who then is obviously asking questions to the travel team. We introduced the internal carbon pricing solution because of this urgency, and I'll touch on this in a moment. But this is just some of the companies who made commitments back in 2020 and 2021 on their net zero target (showing a slide listing seven huge corporations /Starbucks, Apple, Google, Microsoft, IBM, UnitedHealth and Unilever/ and their net-zero target year according to public data). And this is just a tiny fraction. There's so many more. And we're working with some of them in helping them achieve these targets. So internal carbon pricing really is about converting CO2, which is very difficult for travelers and businesses who are not working in the industry to get their heads around. What does that really mean? What does it mean if I'm being told my CO2 consumption was 10 tons, what does it really mean? It's hard to understand. So we convert the CO2 for all commodities. First, we measure all of the CO2 with accuracy, auditability, granularity, which is what you need ultimately to report on. And then we convert it to money, which is actually much more understandable and tangible than tons of CO2. And ideally at the same cost that the company would be paying for CO2 offsets and projects or buying credits and so on and so forth. And then we have carbon pricing, which is a combination of the actual cost of travel plus the cost of CO2. And as an example, I'll show you a dashboard of that. 

So you can see here for “By department”, what the cost is, which is the CO2 in kilograms converted to money. This is in dollars, but it could be any currency. And that's the travel spend (showing another column). And here then you have the actual total cost to travel broken down in the next column. And obviously you can see the cost in between all the commodities and so on and so forth in the graph below. So by breaking it down, and you can see here, the carbon cost by travel type by air is massive. But the total cost is a bit different. So by converting it into a true internal carbon cost, it makes it more intuitive to manage. So here are some of the steps that we've helped our customers go through to 1. Measure and set the ICP budgets calibrated to the organizational goals and net zero targets, 2. Monitor versus the budget, which is incorporating predictive analysis because, you really want to be careful about using historical data and you want to actually measure versus the forecast because most companies are seeing their travel spend and travel activities increasing over time. And I think there's some studies, at the GBTA, that sometime next year, we're actually going to be at the same level in terms of volume as pre-pandemic. I think we're pretty close already in terms of spend, but in terms of volume, there will be a shooting past that next year. So, It's no good just to look at the past. You need to make the right forecast using predictive analysis. And then you can forecast any overspend versus budget before it happens. And most critically, you don't want to just report on it. So our clients are taking the 3. Step to really actively managing their programs, it's not just reporting, but coming up with true ICP saving strategies. And then using that information to be a partner to the business and meeting their Net Zero goals. You don't want to just report on it. You want to be an active partner, a value consultant to the business. But the key question is, how do you manage all of this with your limited resources? And if I think about it, there's not a single travel department that I've ever met where they had complaints about having too many resources. They are usually asked to do too much. And the phrase that I always say is, “never have there been so few people managing the welfare and the money for so many.” So you probably don't have the headcount. You may not have the expertise. You certainly don't have the time. So how do you do this? So we want to introduce this concept of AI agents who you can hire as a virtual member of your travel team, who's trained on monitoring your ICP, your CO2 ICP, forecasting, planning and budgeting, identifying savings opportunities, and actually suggest and execute the engagement strategies. So this AI agent, which is part of our PredictX platform, you can think of as a member of your team. And if you think of how you normally interact with your team, especially if they're virtual, it's probably through some sort of chat mechanism. This is Microsoft Teams in this example. We have Sam, who's my sustainability analyst. And I'm going to work with my sustainability analyst to actually execute my sustainability strategy. So first, I want to ask Sam, “give me a high level summary of our sustainability program”. So much in the way that you might ping a colleague. I'm pinging Sam to say, okay, now give me an overview where we stand. So here we go. It's saying overview, the sustainability program is designed to reduce, etc. What we have achieved is a reduction in travel. We've done a 19% reduction, etc, etc. So, we want to go on with that. Now I want Sam to actually help me do the work. So typing “thanks, Sam”. I always want to be polite. Typing “Now help me calculate a budget based on our Net Zero commitment and business needs. Show me department by department and at a high level based on forecasts”. So Sam can do these forecasts, do these calculations, calibrate against our Net Zero commitment, and then come up with a proposed budget. So here we go. There's several departments. Here's the current carbon cost targeted at 25% reduction, making the ICP cost from £4.5M to £3.4M. And then, same format listing the data for the customer success and corporate department, shared services, IT department, etc. And then here's a nice table of what the new budget could be and then what the total proposed new budget could be. So the proposed budget aligns with the organization's Net Zero commitment. 

They're focusing on achievable carbon reductions while ensuring that each department has the necessary resources to operate effectively. Regular monitoring adjustments will be essential to track progress. OK, so now we will ask Sam to identify CO2 saving strategies we can put into practice (typing into the chat with Sam). So Sam is a very experienced expert on sustainability and a resource that would be a great asset to your team. And she can now come up with specific action plans, create virtual meetings, etc. 

So I'm going to focus on one thing that I talked about. For routes under four hours that require rail travel as the default option. Typing into the chat “Okay, let's drill into rail travel. Which routes could we promote Rail versus Air ?”. Sam replied. There we go. Highlighting the route Nice <-> Paris with currently 8% miss savings of £232,000. Madrid <-> Paris. Milan  <-> Paris. Sam is also giving additional recommendations to implement these strategies into reality such as Booking Tool Enhancements to highlight the rail options, etc. 

So if I want more information regarding this, then I can type to Sam “Is there a dashboard of Air versus Rail I can look at?” So I want to drill into some of this on my own. Sam replied with a link to a dashboard. Great. So then you click on the link. Brings up the Air versus Rail dashboard where you now have a lot more routes to look at. Here's the Barcelona <-> Madrid route. When you click on that, you see that the average rail travel is  2.7 hours versus 1.4, but its massive savings in terms of CO2. Excellent. On the dashboard you can further drill into other routes and identify savings as well.

So I think that was my time slot cap so if you guys have any questions, I am happy to answer them. I mean, wasn't Sam great? She actually knows so much more about this than I do. Maybe we can ask Sam to answer your questions. 

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Host: Fantastic, Keesup. Thank you so much for that presentation. So we finished by looking at Sam. Incredibly impressive tool and use of AI, Keesup. Can you just help us understand what was the source of the information that Sam's using there?

Keesup: Yeah. So Sam is using basically just the travel data, the bookings and the actual activities. Then Sam is able to convert that into CO2 and ICP. The additional piece of data, which is actually the target sets, that would be coming from your sustainability team in terms of Net Zero or other mid-level targets. And then Sam can put it all together and start helping you manage the program. 

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Host: Fantastic. I think that touched on the question we got here from Lisa, which is, “Can these AI powered programs work if you have multiple TMCs and concur systems? We're struggling with integration activities and this can make sustainability visibility a challenge.”

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Keesup: Yeah, so Sam can take all of the data from every TMC. We have other AI tools that will do the integration and consolidation before it gets to Sam. It's called AI swarms, swarms of AI agents. Each one of them has a very specific set of skills. We have other agents who will then take all the data and normalize it, and correct it, and integrate it before it gets to Sam. This is a whole new world of management, really, where the stuff that you don't want to focus on, which is just the messy data, is taken away from you and you can really think about strategy and engagement. That's the biggest thing. Travel managers spend so little time doing engagement, influencing and advising, which is what they should be focused on.

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Host: I loved your comment about the time poor nature of being a travel buyer. There's so many requirements on them. Just got a couple of other quick questions coming in here. “Can we add TMC integration flat files extracted, for example, from expenses to capture leakage and direct bookings? 

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Keesup: Absolutely. We need to capture everything. That's the other key thing. Where you're taking pre-canned CO2 measurements from one TMC, for instance, which is I have no knock against them. But obviously you're missing the leakage. So if you want to actually report on true CO2 or true ICP, internal carbon pricing, and you're not factoring out the leakage from your cards and expenses, potentially with non-preferred and so on and so forth. Then you're missing a massive amount of CO2. So in an audit, because eventually this stuff is going to lead to a board audit, right? That Net Zero date comes along and there's going to be an audit and you want to represent that it's correct. And if someone says, well, “what about all these other bookings?” And the proof of the pudding is, if what's called “travel spend" that your TMC is reporting is not the same as what your General Ledger is saying, because in the end, the general ledger is what's actually paying the money, then we know that there's a gap. And that will be a red flag to auditors saying, why is there a gap? Then how can we trust your CO2 numbers? So you have to bring it all in. 

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Host: Keesup, it was a fantastic presentation. We are out of time, but I just wanted to, because I know we've got a lot of interest here. Very briefly, if you wouldn't mind, how do people engage with you? Can you engage your services via your TMC or is the relation direct? How do people do business with you? 

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Keesup: We have partners, but we love to talk to you directly. That's how we learn as well. And I forgot to show one slide. If you want to, I have a little slide, which is advice on how to get started.  A step-by-step process of this journey that we've learned from our clients who've gone through that. So if you guys are interested, we'll have this available through ITM. And also we'll have a bigger version of this in terms of a work plan for you guys. You can download from our website, but please contact us. Reach out on linkedin personally to me if you want. 

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Host: Thank you so much for your time, Keesup, and PredictX. Thank you. I'm looking forward to it. Take care. 

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Keesup: Thank you, nice to be here.

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