Profiles In Travel Management: Thinking Globally, Acting Regionally - 2007-10-22

Company: The Interpublic Group of Companies
Headquarters: New York
2006 U.S. Booked Air Volume: $65 million

With future aspirations of globally consolidating its travel management services, the Interpublic Group of Companies is taking a regional approach, with American Express Business Travel handling its U.S. and Canadian travel management operations and HRG recently consolidating its top five travel spending countries in Europe into a regional travel management structure.

The advertising and marketing services conglomerate plans to consolidate travel management in Asia/Pacific in 2009 and globally thereafter. Meanwhile, it enhanced its travel management technology by implementing a customized U.S. profile management system with Barrington, Ill.-based Trondent Development Corp. Interpublic also plans to roll out an online booking tool in Europe by the end of 2008 and extend the corporate card program there once HRG completes the five-country consolidation, expected by year-end.

The company's burgeoning travel expenditure and previously fragmented program impelled Interpublic director of global travel and corporate credit card services Fran McClarnon to embark on a regional approach to travel consolidation.

In fall 2006, McClarnon set the baseline of Interpublic's travel program consolidation by transitioning from a 50/50 split of TMC services between Amex and Carlson Wagonlit Travel in the United States and Canada to an exclusive contract with Amex to handle its $65 million in 2006 U.S. booked air volume expenditure.

The more recent regional consolidation of Interpublic's travel management operations in France, Germany, Italy and Spain—which together represent $20 million in air volume—and the United Kingdom, which accounts for $15 million in air, has marked the next step in rationalizing the complex travel program.

The move to HRG followed a challenging bid process for McClarnon, who was hampered by the fragmented contracts between Interpublic's individual operating companies and suppliers. According to McClarnon, each operating company within Interpublic had its own agency and airline deals in place.

"In that process, we were challenged because we didn't have the information from so many of our companies, because in each one of these companies everything was decentralized," McClarnon said. "There were different TMC deals and airline contracts. In France, we may have had five companies and each would have a different Air France contract."

While a globally consolidated program with one agency still is years away, McClarnon said consolidation requires understanding local nuances, such as cultural and language barriers, and local service deals.

"As we consolidate and see what their business really means and the challenges travelers have working with their local agencies, we recognize those relationships, but we also put in appropriate mechanisms for the company to manage their business travel financially and also operationally," McClarnon said. "In Italy, we may find that they have local deals in place that may be so inexpensive that it may not be worth it to consolidate that business, because it is so small that it doesn't really matter."

Along with more accurate data and streamlined reporting, the implementation of the Trondent solution and consolidation efforts have prepared the European program for a rollout of an online booking tool in the coming year, according to McClarnon. Before, McClarnon was hard-pressed to implement an online booking tool in the region because of the lack of a common back-end platform, reporting structure and consolidated policy.

Now, with the agency consolidation in Europe well underway, McClarnon plans to enhance reporting and data consolidation through a corporate card program in the region.

"As we move our travel services program into these countries, we are moving into a corporate card program platform so that each one of our employees will have an individual card," she said.

McClarnon already manages a corporate card program that encompasses 10,000 cards in North America and some travelers in the United Kingdom with primary vendor American Express and secondary vendor Diners MasterCard.

In the meantime, Trondent created a customized online profile management system for use in North America to provide Interpublic's 14-person travel team with accurate data and easily transfer traveler information between the company's PeopleSoft human resource system and the travel program.

The profile system enables Interpublic to hold and manage its own data independent of the agencies, streamline reporting across regions, send e-mail notifications to travelers to manage profiles and synchronize profiles to appropriate supervisors for approval. In addition, the system also builds shell profiles for outside consultants and temporary employees, ties into tiered policies for the various operating companies and links profile data with online booking tools and global distribution systems.

"Quite frankly, I don't want an agency to own my data. It also makes it much easier to move from agency to agency," McClarnon said. "It's easier for me to own my own data and it's easier for me to bring in other agencies into our platform to make it easier to manage our own profile database."