IN SOME BUSINESS TRAVEL QUARTERS, if you mention the C-word, you will be treated to a stream of vitriol – but the C-word in question is not a profanity but ‘consultant’. Consultants in the business travel
management sector have been around for a couple of decades now. At first, they were typically former travel managers whose companies had decided to make the role redundant – consultancy was often seen as a stopgap measure before a new job as a travel manager was secured. More recently, consultancy has become seen as less of a stopgap and more of a valuable link in the business travel chain, offering everything from help putting together travel management company (TMC) tenders to independent advice on technology. The headcount reduction that has accompanied the recession in some companies means that there is a natural role for consultants to fill
THE CONSULTANT
BOUDA DESCRIBES ITSELF as a business travel consulting firm that “helps companies make the right decisions about travel suppliers, policy, processes and technology”. Co-founder Clare Murphy was previously commercial director for Capita Business Travel. She says consultants get a bad press, and that it’s unjustified. “I feel like I am the United Nations sometimes, acting as an interpreter for the client,” she says. “The TMC says something and the corporate hears something else. It’s my job to say to the client: ‘This is what he said and this is what he meant.’” As well as working as an outsourced travel management function, Bouda
consults on technology and self-booking tools in particular. Murphy says this aspect of consultancy is valuable because some TMCs are reselling so many tools that they “are not masters of them all”. She says: “In one scenario recently when I was implementing a self- booking tool, the TMC said it couldn’t do something in particular, so I had to go straight to the provider who said it could.” Consultants can also offer value, she says, because with travel management
often a small part of a wider procurement role, clients are not always as well versed as the TMCs who “live it and breathe it every day”. Murphy explains that corporates “don’t always know all the things the TMC charges for, and they often don’t know the questions to ask”. Bouda, where former E.on travel buyer Judith Gledhill is a fellow director, gets most of its business from referrals. “I would always urge companies to take up references,” says Murphy. “We always give potential clients a number of references to choose from.”
the gap, usually on a part-time basis. This set-up means the corporate does not have the expense of providing office space or the extras associated with full-time employment, such as National Insurance and pensions. Sometimes consultants are
employed as part-time outsourced travel managers; at other times they simply come in to offer specialist advice on procuring business travel to a head of procurement, who’s charged with a wide portfolio of categories of spend such as facilities, fleet and office supplies.
Consultants will typically
work on a day rate, or a project fee that might amount to 1 or 2 per cent of the travel spend. All consultants will usually claim to be cost neutral – that their fee will easily be smaller than the cost savings the corporate will enjoy by taking their advice. So what do the various industry sectors think about consultants? ■