Case Study

A construction firm’s new Travel Manager shows quarter-one impact in T&E — with zero integrations and no IT lift

Company and starting point

A regional construction contractor operating across several MENA countries was flying engineers and site leads every week. Bookings were scattered across websites and agencies. Flights were often bought last-minute under the excuse of urgent needs. Hotels near project sites were picked in a rush, with little time to compare options. Finance spent up to eight working days closing T&E because of inconsistent invoices.

The new Travel Manager came in with one clear goal: show measurable savings in the very first quarter — without asking IT for integrations, SSO, or custom feeds.

Want to see the flow end-to-end? Watch the 20-minute Tumodo walkthrough video.

What changed — and why no IT was needed?

The team launched Tumodo in a “zero-integration” mode. Users received access by email, roles and spend limits were set directly in the admin panel. Cost centres, projects and the traveller list were uploaded from Excel in one go. Approvals happened by email: managers could approve requests with one click, and Tumodo kept the full audit trail.

Policies stopped being just static PDFs. Now they were enforced at booking: advance-purchase nudges, hotel guardrails (rating, acceptable price range, distance to site and cancellation terms), and tighter control of extras like baggage, seats and flexibility. If a traveller tried to book outside the rules, the system required a short justification and sent a request for approval to the head of department.

Preferred suppliers appeared first. If an off-contract option was chosen for a legitimate reason, Tumodo recorded the “why”. Where public web pricing undercut a quoted fare, a parity flag opened and the case was closed promptly.

See the exact setup — download the Advantages Checklist and mirror the policy levers we used.

The IT angle — fully addressed

In this organisation, IT time was expensive and tightly gated. Security reviews, vendor onboarding, change windows — everything had to queue for approval. Typical ‘quick fixes’, like building parsers, stitching CSVs or launching a BI feed came with hidden costs, driven by the hidden work behind potential problems. For example: breakage when websites changed, credential management, cron drift, re-running failed jobs, and long-term ownership. After all, who do you think fixes a broken script at 2 a.m. before a board meeting? At MENA market rates, even the smallest IT tasks carry significant costs — and support is rarely available when travel needs it most.

The pilot sidestepped that entire burden:

• No parsers, no scrapers. Tumodo records the lowest available fare at the moment of search (the LPP), along with the full set of options the traveller saw. Nothing needs to be scraped or reverse-engineered.
  
  

• No ad-hoc data plumbing. Finance received standardised exports and e-invoices in their requested format. No more spreadsheet merging or mid-month IT requests for “one more field”.
  
  

• No custom automation. Exceptions, approvals, parity flags, re-pricing prompts, unused-ticket wallet and duty-of-care are native features. Operations and Procurement configure the policy engine themselves — no developers required.
  
  

• Security and privacy covered. Users authenticate by email; role-based access controls and audit logs are built in. Risk and compliance teams need no extra IT controls.
  
  

And when IT finally does want in — only after Finance already sees the value — Tumodo supports light-touch enhancements: SSO, ERP/HR master-data sync, automated receipt capture and near-real-time BI feeds. These come after the pilot, so IT invests hours — not weeks — into a stack the business has already validated.

How the first 90 days unfolded

In week one, the team captured a baseline: routes, purchase prices, typical booking windows and hotel choices near active project sites. Excel lists were uploaded, roles and approval paths were set, and managers received a brief primer.

Week two brought a controlled go-live for two departments in one country — flights and hotels. In week three, exceptions and hotel rules were refined around site radius and cancellation terms. By week four, price-parity checks and ground transfers were active.

There was no big-bang change — just a steady cadence of small policy refinements, while Finance finally received consistent weekly exports in a standardised format.

Prefer to see the numbers with your own inputs? Try the interactive KPI calculator (EN): enter your monthly T&E spend and an expected savings rate. The table will show you the monthly and annual impact across all KPI sheets.

Quarter-one results

In the first 90 days, the organisation saw measurable improvements across cost, compliance, and process efficiency:

• 8% lower average airfares
  Driven by earlier bookings and Tumodo’s pre-ticket re-pricing when fares dropped.
  
  

• Hotels 5% below city ADR benchmarks
  Achieved through site-radius and cancellation guardrails — savings without cutting quality.
  
  

• Travellers booked 7 days earlier (median)
  Policies and nudges encouraged forward planning, reducing last-minute premiums.
  
  

• 81% preferred-supplier share
  Off-platform leakage shrank to just 4%, with exceptions tracked and justified.
  
  

• 82% of unused-ticket value recovered or reissued
  The unused-ticket wallet turned from a black box into an asset.
  
  

• Finance month-end close shortened from 8 days to 5
  Thanks to invoices and registers arriving in one consistent format.
  
  

• Support acknowledged requests within 7 minutes
  Even at disruption peaks, 95% of tickets met this SLA.
  
  

• $105,000 saved in the first quarter
  On a $420K monthly T&E base, that’s ~$35K per month — all without any IT effort beyond account creation.

The conversation moved from “prove it” to “scale it.”

Need Finance on board quickly? Use the Finance Request memo and email templates (EN), already written with Tumodo’s benefits and KPI targets.

Measurement and governance

Finance agreed upfront on the methodology. Air savings were measured against the lowest available fare at the time of search (the LPP snapshot Tumodo records in each request). Hotel performance was compared to the city ADR benchmark on the same dates and under the same constraints. Like-for-like comparisons excluded force majeure.

Every reported figure could be traced back — to the booking, the approval, the options displayed and the reason for any exception. Supplier performance (preferred share, parity flags, SLA) was included in quarterly reviews, so negotiations relied on hard data rather than guesswork.

Culture, compliance, and duty of care

The Travel Manager framed policies around safety at sites, respect for local norms, and stewardship of budget. Travellers had clarity about what was allowed and when a short justification was appropriate.

Client meetings and on-site windows were supported rather than obstructed; when disruption hit, 24/7 assistance and incident playbooks addressed re-routes and hotel changes quickly.

What happens next (Q2 roadmap)

Once quarter-one KPIs are stable, the plan is to scale by country and function. The next steps include introducing SSO and ERP/HR sync to reduce manual upkeep, enabling automated receipt collection, and adding a lightweight BI feed for executives who want cross-portfolio views.

Supplier QBRs will be formalised with Tumodo data — covering preferred share, parity closure times, SLA adherence and seasonality by route. If stakeholders require it, Tumodo can also activate sustainability views (such as rail share on short routes and eco-certified hotels) and duty-of-care reporting by the cost centre.

Ready to try the flow with your own trips? Request a 14-day demo environment and run a controlled pilot on two departments.

Prefer a quick overview for leadership? Share the 20-minute walkthrough video in your steering-committee pack.

Need a crisp summary for stakeholders? Attach the Advantages Checklist alongside the KPI calculator.