CrossFire Travel Management Reporting System
CrossFire is a Travel Management Reporting system designed to meet the needs of travel agencies and corporate travel departments with advanced reporting requirements.

In summary, CrossFire:
  • Accepts travel information from a number of sources including back office systems, quality control systems and other reporting systems;
  • Validates and corrects illogical information;
  • Stores the travel information in a relational data base;
  • Produces scheduled or ad hoc reports and graphs in a variety of formats using a proprietary, travel industry-oriented Report Writer;
  • Automates report distribution.

CrossFire offers unique features in three critical areas:

Data Integrity

The majority of travel management reports produced by corporate travel agencies are plagued with omissions, errors and inconsistencies. Although the output of a system is generally no better than the information entered into it, CrossFire goes to great lengths to improve the quality of the information it receives. "Raw" data from the source systems is validated and corrected in order to provide meaningful travel management reports. This feature sets CrossFire apart from other reporting systems.

More about Data Integrity.


Functionality

Scalability

CrossFire can be configured to meet the needs of a wide range of processing scenarios. from a complex multi-user, multi-database environments to a desktop tool for a single user.

More about Scalability.

Reporting Capabilities

    Our proprietary report writer allows the user to define custom reports to suit their needs. The user does not need to learn any additional software packages such as Crystal Reports or the Borland Paradox reporting tools used by other travel reporting systems. It is not necessary to understand Structured Query Language (SQL) or any data base programming language.

    CrossFire offers a number of travel management reporting features including:

    • Multi-period trend reports and graphs (year over year, monthly, quarterly)
    • Geographic reporting (airports, cities, states, territories, countries, continents, regions, domestic, international, trans-border)
    • Hierarchical reporting (departments, regions, corporate structures)
Reporting Presentation

The CrossFire report writer produces easy-to-read reports featuring:

  • Client and travel agency logos
  • User-defined fonts, shading and colors.
  • Output in PDF, Excel or various database formats.
  • An optional graph module produces customized graphs in a variety of styles.

View Sample Reports.

View Sample Graphs.

Operational Efficiency

CrossFire offers a number of features that streamline the report production process. For example,

  • Reports that are produced on a regular basis can be grouped into Report Batches. By selecting a Report Batch, complete sets of reports can be produced for multiple clients with a single entry.
  • Separate weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual report groups can be defined for clients. This allows all clients with regularly scheduled reports to processed with a single entry.
  • Multiple ad hoc reports can be set up and processed in a batch.
  • Batches of reports can be emailed automatically.

CrossFire Online Reporting
The many features of the CrossFire travel management reporting system can be made available to authorized users via the Internet.

Here's how it works:
  • Authorized users and their passwords are defined by the CrossFire administrator in the travel agency or corporate travel department.
  • The CrossFire Adminstrator determines which client codes and which reports an online user may access.
  • On a regular basis, travel data and report definitions are uploaded to the web server maintained by CrossFire Services, L.L.C.
  • Authorized users can access CrossFire Online from the Internet and request batches of reports to be processed or can enter specific criteria into report definitions to perform ad hoc reporting.
  • Reports can be produced as PDF files, Excel spreadsheets or Ascii text files.
  • Report output can be viewed on the screen or can be sent to the user via e-mail.
CrossFire Online offers the following advantages:
  • Any CrossFire report can be uploaded to the CrossFire Online system.
    This ensures that a user can get the same reports from the Internet that are produced by the travel agency or corporate travel department. Some online reporting systems are not available as in-house systems. Online reports provided by those systems are often different than those provided by the travel agency and quite often have different totals!
  • Different sets of reports can be defined for individuals users.
    Online users have varying needs for travel management Information. CrossFire Online allows for a reporting package to be customized for each Internet user. Up to three different report packages can be developed for each user. For example, Weekly, monthly and quarterly report packages can be defined for each user.
  • Multiple reports can be requested in a batch and sent to the user as a single e-mail.
Some online reporting system require each report to be requested individually. The user then receives a separate email for each report processed. CrossFire Online allows for batches of reports to be run, however, a single email is sent with each of the reports included as attachments. The text in the body of the email serves as a table of contents for the attachments.


Global Data Consolidation

A growing trend in travel management is to increase purchasing power by consolidating corporate spending information. The benefits of consolidated information are available to:
  • Corporations that use more than one travel agency, either domestically or internationally.
  • Travel Agencies serving corporate corporate clients that use multiple travel agencies. By providing data consolidation services, the travel agency strengthens its relationships with its customers and potentially increases revenue by becoming the source for travel management information.
  • Travel agency consortia can provide common reporting products to its customers.
The consolidation process can be be performed in-house by CrossFire users or the entire process can be managed by CrossFire Services, L.L.C.
CrossFire Global Data Consolidation Features

    In addition to its many travel management reporting features, CrossFire offers several advanced capabilities related directly to consolidation of travel data from multiple sources:

    • Multiple Currencies
      Travel data can be accepted in any currency and reported in any currency.

    • Corporate Hierarchy reporting

      CrossFire can incorporate the customer's internal reporting structure so that global reports can be produced by functional area such as "Sales" or "Manufacturing" or "European Region".

    • Geographical reporting

      CrossFire reports provide insight in to travel spending by geographic area such as country and continent or by user-defined regions.

    • Transborder reporting

      In many cases, the traditional "domestic vs international" reporting is not adequate for meaningful analysis of spending patterns. CrossFire supports transborder reporting which allows the user to subdivide the international totals into an additional category for short-haul international flights.
      • Report Perspectives

        Global reports have a wide range of users and the traditional "US-oriented" designation of domestic and international is not relevant to all. When CrossFire reports are produced, a report perspective can be specified that will automatically change the domestic and international designation to suit the needs of the user.

 
Make sure you've defined your objectives. Read our whitepaper on this issue.
Data integrity is a key issue in reporting. Read our whitepaper on this issue.
Consolidating data is more than just merging files. There are many issues to consider. Read our whitepaper here.
We've created a list of criteria you should be looking for in a travel reporting system. Read our whitepaper here.