The People’s Choice award, voted by Innovate buyer attendees, went to two former winners whose companies each have been acquired by expense management specialist Emburse and were showing off the first fruits of their combined labors.

Jeroen van Velzen, founder of Roadmap and now SVP of solutions strategy at Emburse following its acquisition of the app in March 2021, said many startups exist to “get rid of the complexities” embedded in long-established processes or, in Roadmap’s case, to “get compliance through your program by making the user experience convenient to the end user.”

TMCs, he said, can deploy new technology and automation to ease the burden on staff but also must push the envelope to ensure their survival as well-funded, tech-first competitors penetrate the market. Matt Zito, managing partner of incubator TSI, agreed, adding that too many TMCs fall into the trap of believing “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. They just keep doing the same thing over and over, but eventually you’re going to get run over by new, innovative TMCs.”

While much hype has surrounded generative AI in 2023—think ChatGPT, Bard and Bing—Zito said that artificial intelligence for many years has been harnessed to power chatbots in travel. More recently, corporates such as EY have experimented with blockchain-based booking systems, while payments, profiles and personalization are three areas in which technology and processes are accelerating.

“Some of the core components of our experience as corporate travelers are the most ripe for innovation,” said Sharma, about those areas. “Right now, I’m seeing a lot more fringe pieces: the data, the reporting, the sustainability, the duty of care … all really important components. But those are the ornaments on a Christmas tree.”

If the tree itself isn’t of sufficient quality, she said, then the decorations are going to fall down. “You want to be able to have a full tree and be able to leverage everything, but you have to have a strong core to do that.”

Johnny Thorsen, VP of partnerships at Spotnana, said innovation on those underpinning technologies is in a positive state. “There’s a lot of startups doing great stuff in the booking process, but we are also seeing the first signs of next-gen independent profile systems appearing, we are seeing suppliers creating new ways of delivering deals to buyers, and TMCs are adopting the new tech. We are seeing a lot of momentum.”