In June, Cornerstone CEO Mat Orrego announced the launch of the new Cornerstone Platform, coinciding with the launch of our new brand and website. The new Cornerstone Platform integrates our spend management company, ApexConnect, with our industry leading travel operations solutions and recently launched data platform. By placing data at the core, the Cornerstone Platform addresses the complexities and evolving trends in travel, data, and spend management in one complete platform, the new unified platform delivers several key benefits:
- Eliminates inefficiencies: Travel bookings, expense management, and additional areas like risk and sustainability are often managed separately, leading to fragmented processes and inefficiencies. The Cornerstone Platform unifies these components to streamline operations.
- Unlocks synergies: By integrating travel, spend, and data management, Cornerstone unlocks untapped synergies, improving visibility, decision-making, and overall program efficiency.
- Addresses critical pain points: Disconnected systems lead to costly errors, missed opportunities, and a lack of actionable insights. Cornerstone resolves these challenges through real-time data integration and automation, keeping businesses ahead in a fast-changing environment.
Let’s take a closer look at the platform and explore how its three core pillars—travel operations, spend management, and data optimization—work together to drive efficiency and transformation.
Travel Operations: Solving Complex Travel Challenges with Travel Automation
Managing corporate travel has never been more complex, the pace of change, faster than ever. Fluctuating demand, hybrid workplaces, schedule changes, NDC, multi-source content, talent shortages, climate change, and risk are just a few of the myriad challenges facing organizations. Businesses need a platform that can simplify and automate processes while improving service and productivity. Cornerstone’s Travel Operations solutions are infinitely configurable to solve your travel management challenges including:
- Workflow Automation: By automating routine travel tasks such as ticketing, quality control, and policy management, businesses can reduce servicing costs by up to 25%. This frees up teams to focus on higher-value activities, improving overall efficiency. learn more
- Schedule Change Management: Automated processing of schedule changes reduces the manual effort involved, cutting response times from minutes to seconds. With NDC support and automated notifications, businesses can handle high volumes efficiently while keeping travelers informed and satisfied. learn more
- Unused Ticket Management: Companies are leaving up to 10% of their air travel budget on the table due to unused tickets. Cornerstone automates the management of these unused tickets, reclaiming lost value, reducing operational overhead, and ensuring credits are used before they expire. learn more
- Policy Management: Out-of-policy bookings increase travel expenses and risk, yet 41% of travel managers report compliance below 75%. Cornerstone’s automated policy management tools ensure real-time notifications and approvals, reducing errors and improving compliance. learn more
While optimizing corporate travel operations can boost efficiency and reduce costs, managing spend is equally crucial for driving productivity, automation, and cost control within a travel program. That’s where Cornerstone’s Spend Management solutions can help, providing the tools to streamline spend management and financial oversight.
Spend Management: Streamlining Processes and Achieving Financial Visibility Through Integrated Systems
By integrating systems like Concur, NetSuite, UKG, SAP, and other ERPs, businesses can reduce manual work, improve productivity, and gain full financial visibility into their travel spend.
ApexConnect, a key part of Cornerstone’s Spend Management solution, ensures seamless data flow between expense, travel, invoice, and ERP systems, freeing finance teams from manual reconciliation and providing real-time insight into spend allocation across departments.
Here are key components that drive efficiency and clarity:
- Seamless expense data integration: Cornerstone automates the integration of disparate data sources into top expense platforms like SAP Concur. By unifying data between multiple systems, we ensure accurate and timely updates across your expense management systems and sync with ERP, HR, documents and other systems.
- Efficient and accurate invoice processing: Say goodbye to the days of manual invoice entry and endless reconciliation. Cornerstone automates invoice integration of data and supporting documentation to payment and accounting entries in ERPs.
- Simplify payment management: Manage your payment data flows through a single, integrated platform. Cornerstone syncs vendor and employee payments and provides instant access to expense or invoice details
- Integrate and optimize human capital processes: Cornerstone integrates your human capital management data with other enterprise systems, automating hires, terminations, organization hierarchies and access to spend platforms. Connect to domestic and international payroll platforms to process timely payments for employee reimbursement and payment status to payees.
- Comprehensive spend visibility and control: Gain a holistic view of your organization’s spending. Our platform consolidates spend data from various sources, providing insights and control over your financial landscape.
With these powerful tools, Cornerstone’s Spend Management solution provides businesses with the control they need to manage spend efficiently, reduce processing times, and make smarter decisions based on real-time, accurate data. learn more
Data Management: Powering Travel and Spend with Actionable Insights
At the heart of the Cornerstone Platform is a powerful Data Management solution that integrates and consolidates data across travel operations and spend management systems. This enables real-time insights, advanced reporting, and informed decision-making for businesses. By placing data at the core, the platform ensures that every component—whether it’s managing travel or expenses and invoicing —runs efficiently, with accurate and up-to-date information.
Here’s how Cornerstone’s data platform enables the rest of the system:
- Effortlessly collect and integrate data: Cornerstone’s data platform unifies data from booking and expense systems, creating a single source of truth. This integration provides businesses with complete, real-time visibility across departments, enabling seamless operations.
- Ensure accuracy and trustworthiness of data: The platform ensures data integrity with automated validation and anomaly detection. By continuously monitoring data quality, businesses can be confident that all travel, expense, and financial data is accurate, reducing the risk of errors and inconsistencies across systems.
- Turn data into actionable insights and actions: With advanced analytics and custom reporting, Cornerstone’s data platform allows businesses to analyze key metrics in real time. Dynamic dashboards provide instant access to critical insights, helping companies optimize processes, forecast spend, and make informed decisions faster.
- Optimize data for AI and machine learning: Optimizing data for AI and machine learning is essential for unlocking automation and actionable insights. Cornerstone’s platform ensures data is clean, validated, and ready for AI-driven processes by integrating sources like travel, expense, and HR systems. With optimized data, businesses can improve decision-making, enhance forecasting, and scale automation effectively, gaining a competitive edge.
- Security and Compliance: Cornerstone’s platform is SOC2 and FISMA-compliant, ensuring that all data is handled securely and meets strict compliance standards. This guarantees that sensitive travel and financial data is protected, while also offering robust access control to ensure that only authorized users have visibility into critical information.
By connecting all systems and ensuring data consistency, Cornerstone’s Data Management solution enables businesses to leverage real-time insights across travel and spend management, driving efficiency, reducing errors, and ensuring the platform delivers maximum value. learn more
Why Flexibility in Integration Matters
While full system integration may not be necessary for every business, having the flexibility to integrate key systems when needed is crucial. The Cornerstone platform provides businesses with the option to scale their development based on demand, whether it’s connecting travel booking systems with expense reports or HR systems.
Our collaborative and consultative approach provides the knowledge to implement the solutions you need, when you need them. No less, no more. Use your team, our team, or a hybrid. By building continuous improvement into our process, we’re ready to help you grow as you need it.
By adopting a modular approach, Cornerstone ensures that companies can grow and adapt over time, avoiding the pitfalls of disconnected systems while remaining agile in a competitive, data-driven world.
Final Thoughts: Empower Your Business with Cornerstone
The new Cornerstone platform isn’t just about managing travel or expenses—it’s about empowering your business to thrive in a world where automation, data, AI, and real-time insights are key to staying ahead. Whether you’re looking to automate travel operations, gain better control over your spending, or unify your data sources, Cornerstone delivers the flexibility and power to help you succeed.
With real-time integration and automation, you’ll transform your travel management from a necessary function to a strategic advantage.
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