PredictX has launched Meridian, a platform designed to help travel managers, procurement teams, and companies optimize their travel policies. Meridian allows users to evaluate different policy changes using their own program data, test scenarios, and measure the consequences.
The platform enables companies to import their existing policy and transform it into a dynamic modeling tool. This allows them to simulate potential gains, evaluate financial, environmental, and operational impacts, and prepare robust cases for financial directors.
Meridian features three main functions: Policy Lab, Optimizer, and a comparison tool. Policy Lab tests different combinations of measures, such as booking deadlines, access thresholds to service classes, and hotel rule compliance. Users can estimate expected savings, carbon emissions, and potential operational consequences.
Optimizer sets an annual target for reducing expenses and selects available travel policy levers. The tool analyzes possible combinations to achieve the target while minimizing disruptions to the company. A comparison function also allows companies to confront their policy with anonymized market data, including online booking usage and business class thresholds.
Keesup Choe, PredictX’s CEO, states that travel policy often presents some of the best opportunities for program optimization, but changing it can be difficult to manage. Meridian enables travel managers to test changes before implementing them, measure potential savings, and better understand their broader effects.
Meridian is built on the same data analysis infrastructure as PredictX’s other solutions and is one of the foundations of Cogent, the company’s AI agent platform. Using a natural language interface, users can ask questions about their travel program and launch simulations in Meridian. Cogent can then use the results to suggest policy changes and highlight opportunities tailored to each company’s data.
Meridian is currently available in alpha phase to a limited group of existing PredictX clients. They plan to integrate the solution into their standard offering for new clients, aiming to generate value from the beginning of the commercial relationship.