The Biz at BTN Podcast · Business Travel News

The Winners' Circle - Best Practitioner Elevance Health's Travis Steed

·25 min·1 clip

The dashboard flags attendees whose flights, hotels, or dates do not match what they registered.

1. The Biz at BTN episode features The Winners' Circle - Best Practitioner Elevance Health's Travis Steed and his work on meeting-data management at Elevance Health. 2. Michael Baker hosts as BTN Executive Editor, and Travis Steed appears as Travel Services Manager for Elevance Health, where he leads the internal-meetings tool. 3. The episode asks how Elevance Health turned attendee-management work from a manual process into a dashboard that planners can actually use. 4. Travis says Elevance handled a little under 1,000 events last year and that his eight-to-nine-person events team is closely integrated with his own role. 5. He says he sits with the events team in the office, joins weekly calls, and talks with them daily to understand their work. 6. Before the tool, planners pulled departure-arrival reports from BCD and compared them with Cvent or Lenox event data by hand. 7. Travis says that manual comparison became a heavy lift after COVID, when staffing support was lower. 8. The team identified attendee management as the most time-consuming part of the process and targeted it first. 9. The dashboard now brings together registration data, book data, and HR data in one place for planners. 10. Travis says the tool shows who accepted, who declined, whether attendees are internal or external, and what mode of transportation they chose. 11. The dashboard also surfaces airline costs, average ticket prices, vendors used, and any agency fees tied to event travel. 12. Travis says the departure-arrival report was narrowed to only the meeting destinations, because connecting flights were not useful for planners. 13. He says the discrepancy report flags missing flights, missing hotel reservations, hotel-date mismatches, and attendees who left the company after registration launched. 14. The tool also catches duplicate hotel bookings when travelers reserve a second room while waiting for confirmation from the hotel. 15. Planners can mark a flagged item as a non-discrepancy when a traveler explains a trip extension or another legitimate reason. 16. Travis says one challenge was building identification for non-employee attendees so external registration data could tie back to BCD records. 17. He says another challenge was deciding what information mattered, and an email-tracking feature was later removed because it was not useful at the individual-event level. 18. The team currently receives BCD book data every two hours and is moving toward an API process that could reduce the lag to about 15 minutes. 19. The conversation is practical and iterative, with Travis describing testing, rebuilding, and refining the tool as planners gave feedback. 20. Listeners who work with meetings data, BI tools, or event travel planning will get the most value from this episode. 1. The Biz at BTN episode features The Winners' Circle - Best Practitioner Elevance Health's Travis Steed and his work on meeting-data management at Elevance Health. 2. Michael Baker hosts as BTN Executive Editor, and Travis Steed appears as Travel Services Manager for Elevance Health, where he leads the internal-meetings tool. 3. The episode asks how Elevance Health turned attendee-management work from a manual process into a dashboard that planners can actually use. 4. Travis says Elevance handled a little under 1,000 events last year and that his eight-to-nine-person events team is closely integrated with his own role. 5. He says he sits with the events team in the office, joins weekly calls, and talks with them daily to understand their work. 6. Before the tool, planners pulled departure-arrival reports from BCD and compared them with Cvent or Lenox event data by hand. 7. Travis says that manual comparison became a heavy lift after COVID, when staffing support was lower. 8. The team identified attendee management as the most time-consuming part of the process and targeted it first. 9. The dashboard now brings together registration data, book data, and HR data in one place for planners. 10. Travis says the tool shows who accepted, who declined, whether attendees are internal or external, and what mode of transportation they chose. 11. The dashboard also surfaces airline costs, average ticket prices, vendors used, and any agency fees tied to event travel. 12. Travis says the departure-arrival report was narrowed to only the meeting destinations, because connecting flights were not useful for planners. 13. He says the discrepancy report flags missing flights, missing hotel reservations, hotel-date mismatches, and attendees who left the company after registration launched. 14. The tool also catches duplicate hotel bookings when travelers reserve a second room while waiting for confirmation from the hotel. 15. Planners can mark a flagged item as a non-discrepancy when a traveler explains a trip extension or another legitimate reason. 16. Travis says one challenge was building identification for non-employee attendees so external registration data could tie back to BCD records. 17. He says another challenge was deciding what information mattered, and an email-tracking feature was later removed because it was not useful at the individual-event level. 18. The team currently receives BCD book data every two hours and is moving toward an API process that could reduce the lag to about 15 minutes. 19. The conversation is practical and iterative, with Travis describing testing, rebuilding, and refining the tool as planners gave feedback. 20. Listeners who work with meetings data, BI tools, or event travel planning will get the most value from this episode.

As heard by us

A practical look at internal meeting data getting cleaned up for real use.

This episode centers on Travis Steed of Elevance Health and a new tool for managing internal meetings. Baker presents Elevance's meetings program as part of a broader travel and events operation, and Steed says the team handled a little under 1,000 events last year with an…

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

If you want a clean case study in meeting-data cleanup, start here.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from The Biz at BTN Podcast