(he puts the figure somewhere between 20 and 25 per cent) from clients of other TMCs. Meanwhile, Bouda’s Murphy wonders
why corporates use their own TMC’s consultancy arm. “If you haven’t got the online adoption, for example, from your incumbent TMC, why would you go back to their own consultancy arm? I’ll never understand that.”
She does understand, however, why TMCs are setting up advisory divisions left, right and centre. “TMCs can no longer rely on a revenue model that is dependent on revenues from the supply side – consulting revenue is a new stream for them.” And Corporate Travel Partners’ Daykin is adamant that using a truly independent consultancy can save clients money in the long run. “We have probably advised more clients not to go to market than the reverse,” he says. “I will never take anybody to market unless there is a damned good reason. The role of
the independent
is no bar to thinking big. When pushed, BTD founder and CEO Peter Reglar does not even rule out the possibility of provid- ing consultancy services to clients of other TMCs less able to offer such advice.
SPECIALISED SERVICES What do the independent consultants make of this proliferation? “It really doesn’t make any difference at all to us,” says Tom Stone, founder and managing director of Sirius. “There is a world of difference in terms of what I and others do, and what the TMCs can offer.” Key among those offerings, everyone seems to agree, is impartiality. Clare Murphy, who co-founded travel technology specialist consultancy Bouda (with Simone Buckley, now chief executive of ITM) harks back to her time with one of the major TMCs. “When you, as a TMC, went to a customer, you knew that the product didn’t fit [the client’s requirements], but it was all you had to sell – so you had to make it fit. “That was one of my drivers to co-found
Bouda. I don’t care what product you use, so long as it’s right for you.” Robert Daykin, who co-founded Cor-
porate Travel Partners, is characteristically forthright. “Who is truly independent these days?” he asks. “There are so-called independent consultancies out there that work for both sides – the supply chain as well as the client. We only work for the client, and the client pays 100 per cent of our income. We will get to know the supply chain, we will love them, we may well even have a beer with them – but
102 BBT MAY/JUNE 2015
“For me, that’s the critical question: is your consultant truly independent?”
we will not take any money from them. For me, that's the critical question: is your consultant truly independent?” He also cautions that the process of select- ing a consultant can present problems of its own. “There are a lot of so-called procurement consultants out there who profess to know the travel category" he says. "The big question is whether they genuinely understand the travel category from the corporate perspective – have they actually managed a global travel programme?”
The mega-consultancy service provid- ers – CWT Solutions, Advito et al – do have some advantages, says Stone. “They have access to analytical tools that indi- viduals haven’t, and they’re very good at getting the data, analysing it, and producing strategic programmes. “However, you can come up with a theory
or a strategy, only to have the client say ‘we don’t work like that’. Our job is to persuade the client to think a little differently – or to say ‘this simply isn’t going to work’.” Somewhat surprisingly, Stone reckons that the big providers do attract business
consultant is to understand what the current relationship is, and if it isn’t working, how can we repair that – let’s go to the marriage counsellor. “Of course there are cases where there is
a complete lack of trust, where the marriage has broken down irrevocably. Then you have to go to market.” He says he only advises clients to tender for services if they are prepared to change, because the cost of change is “absolutely enormous”. When change does happen on the technology front, Bouda’s Murphy can be in it for the long run. “I’d say our business is split 70/30,” she says. “Around 30 per cent of our clients are using us to select the right products for them, and we leave at the time of installation, but 70 per cent ask us to support them through the implementation period, so I sit alongside the corporate at quarterly review meetings, because they want me there to ask the right questions – and sometimes to ‘translate’ the answers.” Any current concerns about TMCs adopt- ing an airline-style unbundling approach to their services may well be short-lived. Airlines’ ancillaries, originally introduced to offset the soaring cost of fuel, are now generally accepted as a fact of corporate travel life, despite the fact that the oil price is a fraction of what it was a few years ago. Furthermore, TMCs are clearly looking out for other revenue-generating options. HRG, which used to be a ‘mere’ TMC, now describes itself as an “international corporate services provider”, a phrase suf- ficiently vague to encompass a multitude of streams. Watch this space.
BUYINGBUSINESSTRAVEL.COM
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