Autodesk in numbers 22 The number of countries
across EMEA the programme has been rolled out to
STEP 3
The adoption rate of its online booking tool is now at 67 per cent, which Woehr is happy with. “Europeans have a different affinity to online booking tools,” he says. “Ten years ago, Concur was not a commonly known OBT for the European market so we really had to convince our travellers to use it, especially at the beginning. “We made it easier to use by focussing only
on booking EMEA destinations,” says Woehr. For offline bookings, employees copy and
paste the itinerary from Concur and email it to Chambers and they propose two or three options. Having tackled the biggest markets first,
this year Autodesk is adding to those 22 countries by implementing its online tool in Israel, Turkey and Romania and later in the year, the UAE, South Africa, Portugal, Greece and Hungary. Woehr is fully aware that for the imple- mentation to go smoothly he needs to be there in person. “You need to do the training and explain your vision of what you want to achieve for the company, especially the duty of care,” he says. “We use chat rooms and online courses
then we go back three months later to do a follow-up,” Woehr adds. One sticking point is Russia in terms of getting the tool working and issuing corporate cards. “It’s a technical glitch with the online booking tool and once sorted it will be seamless between travel and expenses via a central billing card,” says Woehr.
STEP 4
One of the last projects was to reduce cost by introducing telepresence. Autodesk has 22 rooms globally (including seven in the EMEA region) and is building three or four more. “It was a huge investment for the company,” says Woehr, “and I know that when we
11
The number of TMCs before consolidation (it's now one)
67%
The percentage of bookings made through the online booking tool
encouraged people to switch to virtual meetings in 2009/10 some 20 to 30 per cent of our overall travel went virtual.”
STEP 5
Alongside this is a plan to centralise meeting planning, integral to which is the implementation of StarCite into Concur by the first quarter of 2015 in Germany, the UK, France, Italy and Switzerland. Key managers are using it across
Europe in a pilot project currently but in the US, as adoption has increased, Woehr says that by capturing all the information and centralising it through one source, it has already saved the company US$1million. Woehr also knows that once
they can leverage buying power across all hotels in the region – transient and M&E – and trigger group airline fares, that the savings potential will be even greater. “Currently we are fighting to get deposits back because the wrong hotel contracts have been signed,” he explains.
900
The number of travellers in the EMEA region
STEP 6
Looking to the future, Autodesk has proposed a push for more advance booking and is also looking to incorporate sustainability into its managed travel programme. A Sustainability Department has been created which gathers together company-wide emissions on travel, rail and hotels and issues annual reports. A special CO2 reduction is in
effect with car rental partner Hertz and is booked via Chambers. The special hybrid car programme is available in key US markets and has helped Autodesk to drive
down CO2 usage by double- digits. The company just recently won the GBTA/ ICARUS Sustainability Award with Hertz for this innovative programme. Woehr is working
on a modal shift from air and car to
rail on domestic journeys of over 500km, and to implement more rail
cards/passes. “With Deutsche Bahn in Germany and SNCF in France we can get a 50 per cent discount “When we encouraged
people to switch to virtual meetings in 2009/10, some 20 to 30 per cent of our
overall travel went virtual. It was a huge investment for the company”
by using these passes which will have a huge impact,” he says. So far, around 15 of Autodesk’s 100 travellers based in Germany are using the DB Pass. DB provides monthly reports highlighting spend
and savings of CO2 emissions. Autodesk's smart moves over recent years
have brought huge benefits and there are clearly more in the pipeline.
6.4
The size of Autodesk’s EMEA travel spend in millions of US dollars in 2013
THE BUSINESS TRAVEL MAGAZINE 7
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