Corporate travel buyers seek and find new ideas at NBTA conference
By Susan Avery -- Purchasing, 10/15/2009 2:00:00 AM
Travel buyers looking for new ideas in this recovering economy found plenty to choose from at the National Business Travel Association's (NBTA) 41st annual International Conference & Expo held recently in San Diego.
There were more than 65 education sessions on such topics as negotiating with hotels, demonstrating cost savings from agreements with airlines, Six Sigma and taking the travel buy global. Plus there were more than 350 suppliers in an exhibit hall demonstrating new products and services. Suppliers also took the opportunity to announce new relationships with one another.
Go global. Hewlett-Packard and Visa are two distinctly different companies, yet both have global travel programs with striking similarities.
Christopher Juneau, senior director of segment marketing at Concur, pointed this out to travel buyers attending one education session he moderated on launching a successful global travel program.
As director, global travel and meetings at HP, Deborah Mahoney is responsible for managing a $1.3 billion annual spend. The spend is truly global. HP has operations in 170 countries and has one global travel policy, one global travel management company, one online booking tool and one corporate card program. Mahoney, whose team reports to the supply chain organization, told attendees that the goal of the company's managed travel program is to reduce costs.
Ann Kloepfer is director of travel services at Visa. She manages a $40 million annual spend which, like HP, is truly global. Visa has one global travel policy, global airline contracts and a global hotel program. The objective of Visa's program, Kloepfer told attendees, is to monitor compliance to policy and preferred suppliers. "Senior management wanted visibility into spending on travel globally," she says.
Both women face some of the same challenges. For Mahoney, implementing an agreement with a preferred travel management company worldwide is one. Others are communicating with travelers globally and setting up escalation processes (she advises travelers to approach the travel management company to resolve issues).
Most challenging for Kloepfer is the change management involved in taking the travel spend global. Others are enterprise system support (the company didn't have a global ERP system or expense reporting tool) and communication.
She uses metrics around travel policy compliance as a measure of success, tracking exceptions and costs they incur for the company. Other success measures are savings resulting from consolidating the supply base and putting global contracts in place with air carriers and hotels. Likewise, HP's Mahoney is seeing cost savings as well as improved customer satisfaction through the company's global travel program.
The women agree that senior management support is key to success of a global travel program.
Demonstrate value. In an education session on exploring airlines savings methodologies, travel buyers shared their experiences at determining which metrics best demonstrate value procurement adds to a managed travel program. They concluded that there is no one right answer and that each company is different.
Doug Debaltzo, senior vice president and supplier manager at Bank of America, faces the challenge of trying to wring hard-dollar cost savings out of a mature travel program. He's focusing efforts on building a program that's sustainable and says metrics are not as important as the story behind the numbers.
"Cost avoidance is a dirty word. It is not viewed as valid or as real as hard-dollar cost savings, but it does make up the lion's share of the value of a mature program," he says, explaining that while travel buyers may be able to show hard- dollar cost savings in 2009 because average ticket prices are lower due to the recession, they won't be able to do the same next year or in 2011 when the economy recovers and prices rise. An example of cost avoidance: Negotiating with airlines for changes in travel status that minimize fees for baggage and preferred seating.
Pam McTeer, strategic sourcing manager at MillerCoors, backed him up. She tracks performance of her company's corporate travel program with a quarterly scorecard. Metrics she uses include percent of travel with preferred suppliers and cost per (trip) mile.
"It is important to craft your message so that senior management understands it," she says, outling the language she uses when communicating with her internal customers in the company's sales operation.
Bob Brindley, vice president with Advito, the consulting arm of BCD Travel, moderated the session. "What's important is having an understanding of how savings are tracked and being able to explain it," he says. Because procurement has little impact on such things as airline pricing and travel a company does, travel buyers should focus on what they can control such as negotiated contract terms (discounts and market share), compliance to travel policy and use of an online booking tool.
New relationships. At the event, suppliers announced new relationships that, they say, promise to help travel buyers reduce costs and streamline processes—and, perhaps more importantly, improve efficiency for travelers.
Rearden Commerce and StarCite are two suppliers that made such an announcement. Rearden provides software that aggregates web services to automate online buying of travel services, including conferencing, dining, shipping and rail. StarCite provides tools and services that help manage meetings and events. Now, with the Rearden Personal Assistant, users can access StarCite's meeting tool to plan, source and book small meetings. They also have access to the StarCite Marketplace which links buyers with more than 93,000 hotels, venues and suppliers worldwide. The relationship also provides travel buyers with insight into employee spending on meetings and real-time data.
StarCite has a new relationship with Experient, a meeting planning company. Experient will use StarCite's online platform for strategic meetings management, international sourcing and attendee management. Its customers will gain access to the StarCite Marketplace.
BMO Spend & Payment Solutions, a division of BMO Financial Group, now is involved in a strategic partnership with CyberShift. By combining BMO's corporate card with CyberShift's expense management tool, travelers can reduce the time it takes to complete an expense report. It also helps buyers better manage travel spending. BMO also announced a new relationship with Tri-Pen TravelMaster Technologies. From this relationship comes a dashboard that consolidates spending on travel for analysis, visibility and control.
SignUp4 has integrated its event management system with the Amadeus e-travel management tool which gives meeting planners and travel managers an overview of meeting registrations and travel bookings. With the integration, meeting attendees registering via a SignUp4-powered registration website can then be logged into the Amadeus tool to make travel arrangements for the meeting. Also integrated is SignUp4's Travel Management System (TMS) with the Amadeus global distribution system (GDS). In addition, the two companies have entered into a joint referral program.
Other suppliers—travel management companies, airlines, hotels, car rental companies and technology providers—introduced new products and services at the event:
• At its booth, Visa was showcasing its program optimization analytical tools. With one tool, the best practices diagnostic, travel buyers can assess how well their companies' procurement and payment processes are doing and how they can be enhanced. Other analytical tools include accounts payable analysis, average transaction analysis, return on investment (ROI) analysis and industry benchmark analysis.
• Duane Futch, vice president of travel procurement strategy, was at the GetThere booth speaking with attendees about the company's new consulting services. (Before his current post, Futch was a travel procurement practitioner.) He says that GetThere customizes each engagement which includes such services as assistance with developing a roadmap that enhances travel procurement effectiveness, a travel management 101 professional development course and benchmarking.
• Among the many new offerings at the Egencia booth were tools that help travelers comply with travel policy, including trip collaboration tools which simplify coordination with fellow travelers and multi-passenger booking tools that allow trip arrangers to duplicate an itinerary or book multiple passenger flights and hotels.
• For its clients whose travelers use iPhone devices, Concur has introduced Concur Mobile for the iPhone. With the new application, users of the device can manage their travel itineraries, conduct in-policy transactions, capture T&E expense data and approve expense reports while traveling. Already in use by travelers on BlackBerry or Windows Mobile devices, the application can help companies better control unmanaged employee spend that occurs during business travel.
HP, Visa take travel programs global
08/27/2009Travel spend flies onto procurement radar
06/01/2005
Now Playing: 