Mastering the Future of Corporate Travel with Cogent Agentic AI: An Exclusive Interview with PredictX CEO Keesup Choe

Why Agentic AI is the Key to Unlocking Value in Travel & Expense Management

The landscape of corporate travel is undergoing a radical transformation, fueled by the rapid evolution of AI and advanced T&E Reporting. Forward-thinking professionals are moving beyond static dashboards and basic reports, preparing for a future where intelligent AI agents provide instant travel data & analytics and drive significant cost savings. The secret to navigating this new frontier isn't just about adopting a new tool; it’s about learning a new language to communicate with it effectively.

This blog post is based on an interview with Keesup Choe, CEO of PredictX, who spoke with BTN executive editor Michael B. Baker during the recent Global Business Travel Association Convention about Cogent's potential and how travel buyers should be preparing as AI power and capabilities increase. You can read the full interview here: 

PredictX, the company behind the award-winning AI workspace Cogent, is leading this charge. As a winner of the 2025 Business Travel Innovation Faceoff, PredictX's Cogent platform is not just a chatbot. As Keesup Choe stated, "Cogent is an entire platform, an agentic platform where you can create these agents and deploy them on their own or as an aid to an application". It's an entire agentic-AI workforce that creates and deploys virtual agents to work autonomously, solving complex problems and providing dynamic answering of questions that would otherwise be out of reach.

See what makes Cogent a leader in the industry. Read the Cogent’s BTN Innovation Faceoff win blog. 

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Beyond Dashboard: Instant Answers with Agentic AI

For too long, Travel & Expense Reporting has been a manual, time-consuming process. Travel managers are often bogged down by inefficient information retrieval. This is where Cogent’s AI makes a profound difference. It provides instant answers to complex questions, automates data consolidation & insights, and maintains a real-time audit/auditable trail. This enables you to go beyond standard reporting, putting the intelligence of a data science team at your fingertips.

Keesup explained that the goal is to look at AI not just to do tasks we don't want to do, but also "tasks that no human beings could do". He noted that PredictX has the analytical power "of probably 1,000 people researching companies every day". This unparalleled capability not only increases travel program efficiency but also unlocks previously unachievable savings.

Discover the possibilities for your business. See 6 powerful Cogent use cases for T&E reporting and travel data. 

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The Art of Prompt Engineering: A Critical Skill for Corporate Travel

Adopting an AI tool is only half the battle; the other half is learning to communicate with it effectively. This is where prompt engineering becomes a critical skill. Keesup likened this to learning a new language: "Just because you can say, '¿Dónde está la playa?' doesn't mean you are comfortable transacting business in Spanish". Similarly, basic use of a tool like ChatGPT doesn't make you an expert in using AI for corporate travel.

Prompt engineering is the art and science of crafting the optimal inputs to achieve desired outputs from an AI. By mastering this, travel professionals can move beyond basic queries to perform sophisticated analyses and generate valuable reports. PredictX provides resources, such as e-books and training sessions, to help travel managers become proficient in this essential skill, building their confidence to get the most out of their virtual assistant.

Unlock the full potential of your AI tools. Download The PredictX Guide to Prompt Engineering for T&E Management and become an expert! 

Building the Business Case: Securing Investment for AI Transformation

One of the biggest hurdles for travel managers is convincing high-level executives to invest in new technology. The most effective approach is to tie the investment to a quantifiable corporate goal. Many companies have already allocated budgets for AI transformation. By demonstrating how a tool like Cogent can directly contribute to this objective, you can secure the necessary funding.

For example, a travel reporting & predictive analytics tool like Cogent can easily demonstrate its value by identifying specific savings opportunities. The ability to improve prices from an RFP by 10% could translate to $3 billion in savings for a company doing $30 billion in sourcing.

For those concerned about energy consumption, Keesup clarifies that there are two separate considerations: training and inference. While training is energy-intensive, the day-to-day use (inference) is very efficient. The latest Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) used by AI are liquid-cooled, making them 100 times more efficient than traditional cooling methods, which addresses concerns about waste and sustainability.

Cogent is a powerful AI agent workspace, purpose-built for T&E. It is a partner in your mission to optimize travel & expense management, not a replacement for your job. By embracing intelligent AI and mastering prompt engineering, travel managers can unlock new levels of efficiency, insight, and control, transforming their travel programs for the future.

Ready to take control of your corporate travel data? Transform your T&E management with Cogent’s solutions. 

See Cogent in Action

Watch how Cogent transforms a simple query into actionable insights. From analyzing your request to delivering precise answers, Cogent streamlines the process for smarter decision-making.

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FAQ: Your Questions About AI in Corporate Travel Answered

Q1: What is agentic-AI? 

Agentic-AI is a powerful class of artificial intelligence that focuses on autonomous systems that can make decisions and perform tasks with or without human intervention. Cogent is an agentic-AI workspace that revolutionizes corporate T&E management by providing deep, actionable insights and performing tasks like creating emails or visualizations in response to a prompt.

Q2: How does Cogent improve T&E Reporting?

Cogent helps you go beyond standard reporting—instantly answering your complex questions anytime, anywhere. It provides a natural language interface that allows you to ask a question as you would to a colleague and receive an easily digestible, exportable answer instantly.

Q3: What is the role of prompt engineering in T&E management? 

Prompt engineering is a critical skill for working with AI tools. It's the art and science of crafting specific and clear inputs to get the precise information you need. This allows travel managers to perform complex, multi-step analyses of their data and get the most value from their virtual assistant.

Q4: How can AI help with expense compliance? 

Cogent supports expense audit by linking to PredictX's DetectX tool, which identifies out-of-policy spend and fraud indicators. This allows you to use a natural language investigation into flagged expenses, helping you maintain policy compliance.

Q5: What is the PredictX ETL process and how does Cogent use it? 

ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) is a process that cleans and streamlines data. Cogent benefits from this process, as all the data it uses is already clean and ready to go. Cogent itself does not perform this function; it is a core part of the broader PredictX platform.

Q6: Is Cogent a replacement for my job? 

No, Cogent is designed to be a supportive virtual assistant. It acts as a powerful colleague, automating the heavy lifting and enabling you to shift from reactive reporting to proactive, data-driven decision-making.

Ready to unlock a new level of efficiency? Request a trial of Cogent today. 

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