Progressing on a decade-long path to a global travel management program, pharmaceutical company Pfizer this year completed a 24-country agency consolidation in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Though many other initiatives were completed in recent years while the company expanded through acquisitions--including consolidated U.S. operations, a single worldwide corporate payment system and global airline agreements--Pfizer's travel management leaders and agency partners said much work lies ahead. They key, they emphasized during a panel discussion here at last month's National Business Travel Association convention, is intense planning and frequent communication with senior management, travel agency personnel, suppliers and tens of thousands of worldwide travelers.
With travel operations in more than 50 countries and a global travel and meetings spend above $1 billion, Pfizer charted a region-by-region approach to globalizing. Having initially squared away the United States and much of Europe with Business Travel International, the company now has designs on adding more eastern European and Latin American markets into the fold.
"Our objective was one single agency [in EMEA] and we had to do it within 10 months," said Susan Shillam, director of global travel in 39 Pfizer markets. "We had 10 agencies in the region, and even when the agency was the same, there were completely different processes for doing things. We were not leveraging spend with suppliers; some markets had interesting services and some markets were five years behind the times."
For example, because of the disparate agency arrangements, those airline deals that Pfizer had previously negotiated in Europe were not being used at all applicable points of sale.
To get to a single agency with harmonized processes and supplier deals, the Pfizer team started planning at least a year in advance by convening EMEA travel and meetings council sessions to discuss cultural differences and language barriers, and to reconcile separate profit and loss statements.
"The big concern was local control," Shillam said. "Five years ago, Europeans would object instinctively to anything that came from New York headquarters. That has changed. Phil [Dunphy, director of global travel and meetings services] has come to the meetings and has sort of become a European with a strange accent."
A native New Englander who previously tackled Pfizer's U.S. travel program, Dunphy said the best lesson learned was to shed U.S.-centric perspectives. At the same time, he added, local preferences sometimes had to give way to the greater good. "If you have a particular location that uses airline X and the other 90 percent of your spend is airline Y, you are going to focus on the big spend," he explained. "Maybe that one location loses out and you will do the best you can to support them."
Those multinational airline deals that in 2004 began replacing certain national contracts with flag carriers set the stage for Pfizer's latest globalization efforts. "That is when we first experienced the worries around loss of control," Shillam said. To get past that, she was sure to include impacted local-market staff. "If I am negotiating globally with Lufthansa, I would always have with me the German country manager."
This not only helped local managers become comfortable with the process, but also alerted senior management to the merits of globalization. "That then allowed for the global hotel program," Dunphy explained. "People then started to realize the difficulty in managing those supplier programs and getting access to the deals. They started to see the value of a global TMC."
To begin the EMEA process, Pfizer created a travel team representing France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom. Those markets were "a good representation, because they all had a different travel agent, they had different payment mechanisms and different service configurations," Shillam explained.
After a request for proposals process, Pfizer in EMEA selected BTI, which had previously been serving seven of the 24 target markets. An initial implementation schedule of six months was extended to 10 months (ended in January) to allow pre-existing contracts to run their course. "It was unreasonable and unfair to force [local markets] into a deadline that conflicts with other projects," Shillam explained, noting that the centrally managed initiative allowed for customized implementation plans. "We said, 'All you have to do is change the agent. If you have an implant, use the implant. It costs more money, but if that is what you want, do that.' " Later, Shillam added, TMC account reps explained to local-market Pfizer managers the cost-savings benefits of migrating to call centers.
Shillam happily reported that Pfizer EMEA is on track to achieve a three-year savings target and even "uncovered some more millions of euros" by moving all meetings travel spend from specialist agencies to BTI [Shillam also has championed a Pfizer push to globalize meetings management, earning a "Best Meetings Practitioner" award from Business Travel News.]
The next steps are to integrate African and eastern European markets not yet covered by the consolidated program and to continue deploying Amadeus self-booking technology in the EMEA region. In the first month after implementation, Shillam said, four markets had achieved online adoption rates above 50 percent of eligible bookings--exceeding an initial adoption target of 40 percent. To support such development and further reduce costs, Pfizer now is considering regional e-fulfillment centers.
In Latin America, the company is eyeing consolidated agency operations across nine markets by year-end. "We are following the model that Susan [Shillam] set for us ... we are still in the early stages," said Kessie Bratko, BTI director of global accounts. "In Latin America, travel still is a still profit center. Commissions are going away and those markets need to understand the cost structure. If you do not respect the culture in the markets, you will have roadblocks in everything you are doing."
Meanwhile, Pfizer also is working toward a global implementation of Concur expense reporting software and online booking technology--globally branded as Travel Connect, but powered by multiple vendors depending on the region.
Dunphy acknowledged a degree of "anguish" over the years as the company debated the most appropriate paths. He also acknowledged that no program--not even Pfizer's--is truly global. For example, Pfizer uses American Express for several locations in Asia-Pacific. "You take three steps forwards and one step back," he said of technology implementation and new policies. "It is a constant evolution."