FCM Travel Solutions strengthens its innovation program with investment in Shep
MONVTVALE, N.J., Jan. 7, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- FCM Travel Solutions, one of the world's largest travel management companies, today announced it has made a minority investment in Shep, the award-winning browser extension technology that assists companies with better management of travel purchased outside of their corporate travel policies.
Shep is the latest initiative joining recent similar investments and acquisitions made by the company that include Sam :], FCM's Personal Travel Assistant on your mobile, and 30SecondsToFly with its AI powered chat booking platform, to help foster additional product innovation for FCM in the business travel space. FCM plans to incorporate Shep's technology into the next generation of its platform offering.
Founded in 2016, Shep helps companies improve travel program savings, compliance and safety by monitoring activity on over 70 consumer travel sites. In addition to tracking, Shep's advanced browser extension approach can also enforce policy at the point of sale and link to client analytics and duty of care programmes.
The list of accolades since inception have been numerous and include Phocuswire's Hot 25 Travel Startups, Skift's 2018 Corporate Travel Innovators, runner-up at BTN Innovate and Demo Day winner at the Plug and Play Winter Summit in 2018.
"We've had a long relationship with the Shep team and have enjoyed following their success," said John Morhous, Chief Experience Officer for FCM. "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 programs they provide."
"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," said Daniel Senyard, CEO and co-Founder of Shep. "We are very excited to be partnering more deeply with such an innovative team to support and create more sophisticated, empowered, and educated business traveler programmes."
About Shep:
Founded in late 2016 in Austin, Texas, Shep helps enterprises gain insight into the large data and expense blind spot (approx. 30%) that occurs when employees choose to book travel outside of managed travel programs. This is done both through a retrospective leakage audit called the Rogue Report (rogue.sheptravel.com) and in real time through the Shep browser extension. Shep's investors include Capital Factory, Moonshots Capital, Plug and Play, Ellen Keszler, former President at Travelocity Business, Kathy Misunas, former CEO at Sabre, Mariano Dima, former CMO of HomeAway, Jim Finnigan, Co-Founder at SoFi, and Don Birch, former CEO of Abacus GDS. www.sheptravel.com
About FCM Travel Solutions:
FCM Travel Solutions is one of the largest travel management companies in the world, and the flagship global business travel division of Flight Centre Travel Group. FCM's network spans 97+ countries, employing over 6000 staff. At the heart of FCM's business model are our highly experienced people who operate in small teams and are empowered to deliver exceptional customer service to their clients. We never use call centres. The combination of our people's expertise, supplier relations, unrivalled negotiating strength and innovative technology solutions, has positioned FCM as a leading business travel partner for large national, multi-national and global corporations. For the last eight consecutive years FCM has been named the World's Leading Travel Management Company at the World Travel Awards. www.fcmtravel.com
Media Contact:
Allison Wallace
Corporate Communications
Flight Centre Travel Group
[email protected]
604.202.0872
SOURCE FCM Travel Solutions
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