FCM Strengthens Its Innovation Programme With Investment In Shep Off-Policy Booking Tracker

Global travel management company, FCM Travel Solutions, has made a minority investment in US-based Shep, the ground-breaking browser extension technology that helps companies with better management of travel purchased outside corporate travel policies.

Founded in 2016, Shep helps corporates gain insight into the large data and expense blind spot that occurs when employees choose to book travel outside of managed travel programmes. This is done in real time through the Shep browser extension which monitors activity on over 70 consumer travel sites. Shep recognizes when a traveller initiates a hotel or flight search on a consumer travel site and pops up a window that guides the user through the booking with defined pricing parameters, captures the data and sends it either to the corporate client or to FCM for reporting.

Shep is the latest initiative joining recent similar investments and acquisitions made by FCM to foster product innovation in the business travel space. This includes Sam, FCM’s AI-based mobile travel assistant, and 30SecondsToFly with its AI powered chat booking platform. FCM will be demonstrating Shep’s innovative functionality on the TMC’s stand (B130) at the Business Travel Show.

“We’re excited to leverage 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 programmes they provide,” commented John Morhous, Chief Experience Officer, FCM.

“Even in our early days, 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 traveller programmes.”