Being new to travel management can be daunting initially, especially when it comes to implementing travel polices and processes for your organisation and not knowing where you would begin.

 

But if you took a step back and started by thinking about your own personal travel experiences, from meal plans to security, you would notice that you make buying decisions based on your preferences and what you can budget. Business travel is extremely similar - but it stems from the need to travel rather than a desire to travel.

 

The Global Business Travel Association states that “Travel management is a specialized business function that balances employee/traveller needs with business goals. It is a disciplined approach to processes, suppliers, and data for transient and group travel spend. The purpose of travel management is to deliver measurable results in terms of cost savings, service delivery, and risk mitigation.�

 

In your role, you will ultimately find that cost control is responsible for a huge part of all decisions being made. As you not only have to be sure you are getting the best ROI on the total trip cost, but also that your traveller�s comfort is met.

 

To help you keep everything in focus, we�ve created this top 10 list of essentials to ensure that you can successfully manage your travel programmes. And it doesn�t matter whether you are an experienced travel manager, or fresh to the industry, there is always something new to learn due to the consistent change of variables that impact the world of travel management.

 

In Summary

 

1. Know your business
2. Know what the market has to offer
3. Think about policy
4. Mitigate travel risk
5. Analyse service and configuration options
6. Manage supplier negotiations
7. Live the contract
8. Know your payment requirements and options
9. Record the total trip cost
10. Communicate!

 

1. Know your business

 

The first place that you need to start is by understanding your own business and assessing what you are managing. Look at the company size, number of travellers, position of those travellers, and whether they are travelling globally/domestically.  

 

There will be many questions to take into consideration such as:

 

 

• What is your annual travel budget?
• How are you going to book?
• What are the payment methods?

If you keep their objectives in mind, then you know that they will be on board with any decisions you make.

 

2. Know what the market has to offer

 

Analyse if your travel needs are defined as predominantly local or global, and how those requirements fit with this checklist. Take time to look at what is out there that is suitable for your organisation - a technology offering for one company might be wrong for another.

 

A useful process to look at is the CIPS 7 Step Process to complete your tender exercise.

 

With the structure of the 7 Step CIPS process, a Buyer (Procurement or Travel Manager or both) will be able to evaluate a bidding situation between competing suppliers on an even playing field.  Via this process, apples should be able to be compared with apples.  This is most important to ensure the evaluation is correct.

 

You can also keep up with information about Travel Management Companies and business travel news in general by subscribing to respective mailing lists.

 

The number of people that will want to get involved (not just the Stakeholders) will be staggering, and you need to account for the time that it will take to be able to get feedback, and make the necessary changes. However long you predict your tender and implementation process may take, you should probably double it!

 

3. Think about policy

 

Setting a policy is key to corporate travel management.

 

Your policy can be the foundation of a well-managed travel programme. It will provide a standard for corporate accountability and compliance, control of travel costs and savings as well as supporting duty of care and risk management.

 

Due to the changing variables in travel management both internally (change in corporate structure, reporting lines, financial controls, etc.) and externally (change in market supplier offerings, government rulings and charges, the global macro environment), your travel policy needs to be reviewed and/or updated often to remain effective.

 

We have created some tools to help you create your corporate travel policy:

 

• Travel Policy Assessment and Policy Template
• Travel Programme Self Assessment Template 

 

4. Mitigate Travel Risk

 

Your Travel Risk Management Policy (TRMP) should be created hand in hand with your Travel Policy, as the two must support each other and tested to ensure there are no gaps in the execution of the terms.

 

Your TRMP is not the same as an Incident and Crises Management Plan as you need to determine who your Incident and Crises Team are, prepare for various scenarios of risk and determine what procedures should be followed in these circumstances.

 

Managing Traveller risk is the responsibility of 3 key internal parties that must be addressed in your TRMP: The Corporate/Organisation, The Manager and The Employee.

 

5. Travel Services and Configuration

 

Identifying what servicing configuration suits your company best will be according to your environment, objectives, and resources. Costs of travel services will play a large part in your configuration, so you need to identify where savings can be made utilising technology to reduce fares/rates and transaction fees.

 

When it comes to service and configuration you need to:

 

 

•  Ensure you are working with the best fit TMC/fulfilment service
• Ensure you have access to the best selection of content
• Assess how much of your business is suitable for online

 

Whatever route you choose to go down, ensuring you have access to the best selection of content is key to maximising compliance to your preferred programme.  If what your travellers want is outside of the managed programme � you will have leakage and that dilutes your supplier opportunities and weakens your risk management control.

 

6. Supplier negotiations

 

What can you do to reduce spend?

 

Your TMC should be negotiating the best possible rates for you with their suppliers, but having a preferred supplier programme for frequently used air, car, and hotel vendors is strongly recommended.

 

You should assess whether one level of product suits all travellers (from entry-level to senior executives) as the purpose of their travel will depend on what they require and how they book. If you have hundreds of employees traveling for a conference, then this would usually be booked in advanced and the travel dates would not change so you would not need a flexible fare. However, travelling for a last-minute meeting would be entirely different.