By Nina Trentmann 

TripActions Inc. named its first chief financial officer as the corporate travel services company eyes continued expansion and an eventual public offering.

The Palo Alto, Calif.-based company hired Thomas Tuchscherer for the newly created role. Mr. Tuchscherer joins following a stint as CFO of Snowflake Inc., a data management firm, which ended in September. His prior roles include CFO of data integration firm Talend SA and vice president for product and business strategy at German software giant SAP SE.

Mr. Tuchscherer, who was involved with Talend's 2016 initial public offering, declined to provide details on IPO plans at TripActions, but said in an interview: "Getting the company ready for an IPO is a prospect."

TripActions had a valuation of about $4 billion in June, following a $250 million funding round led by venture-capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. Since its inception, TripActions has raised $480 million from investors.

TripActions' software aims to simplify travel arrangements by using machine learning to suggest hotels and flights based on previous bookings made by people in the same organization.

"In order for travel solutions to be successful, you need to have a product that users love," Mr. Tuchscherer said.

The company manages about $2 billion in travel budgets and has more than 3,000 corporate clients around the world. Its clients include ride-hailing company Lyft Inc., Zoom Technologies Inc. and software firm Okta Inc. The company didn't provide details of its finances, but said it has nearly tripled its staff to around 1000 in the last 12 months.

TripActions needs to grow its business to compete successfully with big players in the industry such as SAP's Concur, said Kevin Permenter, a research manager at market intelligence company IDC. "One of the benefits of using these travel booking tools is getting access to discounted tickets and rates," he said. "It helps to be able to make large commitments to get certain discounts."

Signing up larger corporate customers could be a challenge for TripActions, Ms. Strachan added. "Their biggest task will be scaling up to Fortune 500 and S&P 500 companies and their complex travel needs," she said.

Global spending on business travel totaled $1.41 trillion in 2018, up 5.7% from 2017, and was expected to go up by 3.5% this year, according to a recent study by the Global Business Travel Association.

Mr. Tuchscherer will play a key role in managing the company's growth and in making sure its internal systems and processes are aligned. He said he would focus on automating tasks in TripActions's finance function, which has between 15 and 20 staff.

Write to Nina Trentmann at Nina.Trentmann@wsj.com

 

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

December 11, 2019 11:14 ET (16:14 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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