Transforming business travel with AI-driven workflow automation.
Product Design, Prototyping, Design System, B2B, Fintech, Travel
2023
TravelBank is the first all-in-one platform of its kind for managing expenses, travel, and corporate cards. The mission is simple: give valuable time back to employees expensing and booking travel, while empowering finance teams to streamline approvals and processes.
Project Team
My Role: Strategic Design Lead
Cecily M, Product Designer
Sha G, Data Engineer
Brenna C, Product Management
Opportunity
When U.S. Bank acquired TravelBank in 2021, our team recognized a pivotal moment for innovation. As Head of Design, I led an opportunity to demonstrate how artificial intelligence could fundamentally reshape enterprise software experiences. Our challenge demanded both technical innovation and strategic storytelling: create AI solutions that could dramatically simplify complex business processes, while making a convincing argument for the investment needed to bring our vision to life.
Employees struggle with time-consuming expense management processes, while the finance side of the house is overwhelmed by manual approvals and compliance.
The goal of this project was to address these pain points through strategic AI integration, vs using AI just because it’s trendy.
Key challenges included:
Understanding the needs of two distinct personas
Reducing overhead and maintaining compliance and fraud prevention for the admin
Personalizing booking results and automating expense reports for the employee
Creating a proof of concept with a lean and overbooked team
Proving TravelBank's innovative potential within a large corporate ecosystem
A Cross-Functional & Collaborative Approach to Innovation
With limited engineering resources, our team adopted a design-driven strategy. I led a cross-functional approach that brought together product design, engineering, and customer insights. Our prototyping process in Figma became a powerful tool for visualizing and validating our conceptual innovations, saving our engineering team time they didn’t have to invest in this project.
The prototype we developed demonstrated AI capabilities across two primary user experiences:
For Employees:
Personalized travel recommendations tailored to individual preferences
Intelligent booking suggestions aligned with company policies
Simplified expense submission workflows
For Finance Administrators:
Automated approval processes
Advanced fraud detection mechanisms
Significantly reduced manual intervention requirements
Above is a small sampling of the virtual assistant proof of concept created for each audience.
The Solution: Chat-Style Recommendations and Personalization for the Employee
Automating Manual Approvals via Rule Setting for Busy Admins
Outcomes and Organizational Impact
Our initiative yielded significant results that extended far beyond initial expectations. By conducting an executive "roadshow," we not only showcased our innovative capabilities but also secured critical organizational support. The project's success directly led to two key achievements:
Development of two AI-powered features now in production
Securing dedicated budget for a new data team
This outcome positioned TravelBank as an innovation driver within U.S. Bank's broader technology ecosystem while giving admins and employees critical time back in their days.