THE KNOWLEDGE 1 corporate case study
1
THE JLP TRAVEL PROGRAMME IN NUMBERS
80 ,000 The number of partners STEP 4
While instigating a shared service for JLP and Waitrose was an easy decision, what lay before JLP was alien territory. “We recognised that we hadn’t done this before and needed an objective view, otherwise we could miss something,” explains Keppel-Compton. JLP decided to bring in external expertise
in the shape of a consultant. Three were recommended and Sirius Travel Sourcing was appointed in September 2011 as a result of a tender process.
STEP 5
What the team attacked vigorously almost immediately was a massive stakeholder communications strategy, explaining the travel booking plans to various working groups. “There were a million people to corral but resource was unlimited, from IT, comms, finance etc, so that was a real win for us,” says Sirius’ Tom Stone. The “cast of thousands at each meeting,”
was a bonus as Partner engagement was high and everybody was ready to give their time for the project. This consultation process was key. “It allowed us to say, ‘We didn’t impose this on you’,” points out Keppel-Compton.
STEP 6
At the same time, paucity of data was the main challenge confronting Sirius in terms of ascertaining where the spend might be outside the three suppliers. Spot buying and travellers doing their own thing muddied the picture. ”There was no spend analytics data,” says Stone. “We think we had a lot of leakage and that volumes were likely to be higher than we thought,” adds Keppel-Compton. Nonetheless, guesstimates had to be made in order to move forward and brief contenders in the tender process in order to appoint a single TMC to channel all bookings
60%
The percentage of transactions that are rail bookings
3
The number of TMCs used for UK bookings before the consolidation process
through. “There were 25 people present for the beauty parade, representing all interested areas of the Partnership,” recalls Stone. HRG had the best cultural fit with the
organisation and were awarded the contract in January 2012, with a go live date in April for travellers to adopt a single booking channel and use HRG's self booking tool for all point-to-point journeys. Tight SLAs were put in place, including a two-hour turnaround for offline travel requests, refunds and queries concluded within five working days and calls answered within 20 seconds.
STEP 7
With Sirius Travel Sourcing stepping back, JLP appointed a permanent category manager to run the department, Sarah Ockendon. “Otherwise the project would crash and burn,” says Keppel-Compton. An experienced category manager – including spells with XChanging and CWT during her career – Ockendon inherited an “embryonic category relationship in its infancy” with an established hotel programme, airline programme and written travel policy. She also had to deal with some pushback
from the changes. “There was almost a split in behaviour between the self-sufficient irregular travellers and the more reticent regular travellers,” says Ockendon. “It often comes down to a fear of responsi-
bility on items such as cancellation fees when changing itineraries, and to understand that the self-booking tool is not there to the exclusion of the TMC,” says Ockendon. “It’s the regular travellers that have the more complex journeys so we had to convey that it was perfectly OK to call the TMC.” Adds Keppel-Compton: “Partners know
that we pay every time they pick up the phone. All our Partners are doing what they do with the best of intent as it’s their money. It’s refreshing as they will come forward and challenge HRG.”
In the future, plans are afoot to tackle the green agenda, car hire and taxi spend, and to find a solution for those travellers wanting to book on their mobiles, "but that’s an aspiration at present," says Ockendon. In the mid-term there are goals to improve
the 58 per cent adoption rate on the SBT. “I’m happy with that level for the first year,” says Ockendon, “but I have a target to reach 70 per cent by the end of 2013.” Clearly, it has been a huge achievement to
navigate such a large organisation in such a completely different direction. “We had a determination to do it and had to make sure that we had everyone on board and have external expertise to validate what we did,” says Keppel-Compton. “I felt passionately that the service we gave
the majority of our travellers was not what it should be, but now, despite oodles of bumps along the way, for most the service is far better and for others it’s just different.”
STEP 8
Quality MI is now coming through. “We had a gut feeling what the spend was so there’s no surprises, but it’s getting the clarification, knowing that 60 per cent of transactions are rail tickets, for example, so there’s room to get a deal there,” says Keppel-Compton. “There’s lots of opportunity,” says Ockendon.
She already has in place deals for the big spend areas of hotels and route deals, and the MI strengthened JLP's hand when negotiating.
STEP 9
58% The current adoption rate on the SBT
“There was almost a split in behaviour between the self-sufficient irregular travellers and the more reticent regular travellers”
THE BUSINESS TRAVEL MAGAZINE 7
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