The Knowledge > Step-by-step guide How to...
FIND YOUR WAY IN BUSINESS TRAVEL The Institute of Travel & Meetings is handing out a lifeline to all those executives who find themselves having to manage business travel, and have no experience of the sector...
Finally, create a short and snappy one-page executive summary of your findings to present to your sponsor, giving an overview of spend through preferred agent/s and total spend through the expense management system. List the benefits that a managed travel programme can bring and quantify savings from process improvements, consolidation of spend and greater compliance.
Step 2 Engagement
follows, which explains how to find out who your internal stakeholders are, engaging with them to find out their requirements and obtain buy-in from them too. Create
a working party from the top travellers, arrangers, the executive board, the purchasing department,
HR, finance department, IT and risk management and in some larger companies, corporate communications and the CSR Manager. Engage with your incumbent suppliers, as these will be knowledgeable about your programme.
AS PART of the ITM's ongoing pro- gramme of toolkits, they have turned their attention to SMEs and new entrants to travel with the launch of a stand-alone toolkit to share the basics of travel management. The idea is that if you find yourself managing travel tomorrow, you’d be able to tackle it with confidence. The ‘How to Guide: The Fundamentals of Creating an Effective Managed
“The idea is that if you find yourself man- aging travel tomorrow, you’d be able to tackle it with confidence”
Travel Programme’ has been written by travel buyer Chris Reynolds of 3Sixty Global Consulting. Advito – the consultancy arm of BCD – has powered the guide with practical tools. Both items have come out of the ITM's SME and New Entrants (SMENE) Working Party. The basic ‘How to’ toolkit
document is split into five phases – read on for a summary of each of them.
Step 1 This is the 'Discovery' section,
which explains how to get information about your current travel programme
and spend: what’s in place, what works well and where improvements can be made. “You need to know where you are today in order to make the required changes,” explains Jeroen Hurkmans, VP EMEA & APAC for Advito. Define critical success factors, such as compliance, savings, traveller tracking etc. Set clear goals such as timing and employee satisfaction and identify business drivers, which is usually cost. Find a senior executive who will lend
their support to the initiative, then collate data from good sources such as the incumbent travel agent/s, expense management tool and corporate charge card supplier. Review the processes in place and understand if there are benefits to implementing a self-booking tool (SBT) or booking online. It isn’t necessarily the perfect fit for all organisations, unless the majority of your travel is simple, point-to-point journeys, for example. Understand agency costs, payment options, merchant fees and the trend to unbundling, which can create anomalies in the charging process.
Step 3 The RFP process and
purchasing is the next step, which is split into guidelines on how to purchase and choose a TMC through an RFP process (how to create and score an RFP is also included) and those for buying air, hotel and car rental.
Step 4 This is the implementation
step and explains how to go about implementing a new programme or new supplier into the business and must be underpinned by excellent communication through the company.
Step 5 This covers the monitoring
process – how to monitor a new programme and report back and show the value of a managed programme. This is where the hard work begins and is a daily exercise done by, for example, your TMC, and through SLAs and MI.
SOURCE: Until April, the guide can be downloaded free from the ITM website,
www.itm.org.uk. After April toolkits will only be available to ITM members.
10 I THE BUSINESS TRAVEL MAGAZINE
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