Global TMC FCM Travel Solutions has made a minority investment in Shep, a browser extension that allows companies to track bookings made outside of their corporate travel policies.
Founded in 2016, Shep monitors activity on more than 70 consumer travel sites to allow corporates to improve travel programme savings, compliance and safety. In addition to tracking, the solution can also enforce policy at the point of sale and link to client analytics and duty of care programmes.
Shep was given an honourable mention at the 2018 Innovate conference organised by the BTN Group.
FCM said it plans to incorporate the technology into the next generation of its platform offering.
The initiative follows similar investments and acquisitions made by the TMC, including its AI-based mobile travel assistant, Sam, and 30SecondsToFly, an AI-powered chat booking platform.
Chief experience officer John Morhous commented: “We’ve had a long relationship with the Shep team and have enjoyed following their success. We’re excited to leverage some of this technology into our platforms, as we feel the browser extension is a simple and elegant solution to a problem many of our customers face, which is gaining visibility over spend on travel that happens outside of the managed programmes they provide.”
Daniel Senyard, co-founder and CEO of Shep, added: “Even in our early days, John and the FCM team immediately recognised and valued Shep’s potential to solve a major pain point in the business travel market. We are very excited to be partnering more deeply with such an innovative team to support and create more sophisticated, empowered and educated business traveller programmes.”
fcmtravel.com; sheptravel.com