Meritor Globalizes Travel Program, Tech

When travel veteran Jack Reynaert Jr. arrived at Meritor Inc. in early 2011, the company had a travel program but travelers were frustrated by it. The technology they used made it difficult to find the best options.

"They had very low compliance with the travel program," said Reynaert, hired as global travel manager. The online booking system wasn't properly configured, "so when you searched for hotels near headquarters, employees would have to scroll down three or four pages to find the most preferred hotel."

While the company had operations in 19 countries, neither the travel program nor the associated technology was globalized. "In Europe there was frustration as none of the settings were the same," Reynaert explained. "We were going through multiple agencies and pointing to three different global distribution systems on one continent. It was difficult to get consistent results" for travel searches and management data. Some countries also complained of high booking fees not warranted by the level of service provided.

Reynaert quickly recommended that the company "globalize travel and data and focus on providing exceptional service to our travelers to drive compliance." As part of the pitch to the company's CFO, Reynaert said, "On our $16 million in travel spend, I can probably save $1 million a year."

The savings map detailed how globalization could reduce booking fees and how improved compliance could drive up usage of and savings from negotiated hotel and airline deals.

Reynaert said company executives by September 2011 agreed with his plan to "regionalize travel, get away from call centers, move to an onsite and put travel out to bid."

In just a few months, executives analyzed bids and selected an agency for North America to implement as of Feb. 1, 2012, including an onsite at headquarters, an agency in Europe with one call center in Ireland for offline assistance and another in the United Kingdom for online assistance. They also decided to dedicate travel agencies that would be selected later for key destinations. Meritor recently identified an agency in Brazil to service South America as of July 1.

"I'm getting quotes and working on China and India," Reynaert said. "We'll probably fulfill Japan and Singapore through North America" because of the volume.

Meritor previously used a multinational agency, but "some locations had great service and others substandard service," he added. However, the agency provided "excellent reporting, which helped us build the foundation" for the new program. Country managers or their administrative assistants directed travel in various countries.

 Optimizing Technology  

Meritor had a contract with Concur for booking and expense tools and immediately tweaked settings, expanded booking system availability to all employees anywhere in the world and standardized on Travelport's Apollo-Galileo distribution system.

Preferred hotels were identified in Concur so they pop up first in searches. The display shows the free Internet, airport shuttles or breakfast that Meritor tries to include in each rate.

"Because of the structure of our Concur contract, it's little cost to do a hotel-only or car-only booking," Reynaert said. To encourage travelers and their managers to use the tools to book hotels and car rentals, he said that "there is no transaction fee" when booking through Concur.

In North America and Australia, employees also incur no transaction fee to book through Concur, although Reynaert said his department is "absorbing a small amount."

Employee use of the technology has grown to the point that "I'm actually fighting to have them call the agents," he joked.

Meritor negotiated a flat full-service fee with the agency, which books the record in Apollo-Galileo and feeds Concur. "If they call the onsite agent to book flights, a half-hour later they can go into Concur to book the hotel themselves," Reynaert said. "All records are available in Concur, and agents can see all Concur-booked records."

To monitor booking compliance, Meritor had Concur craft a "custom report to show our compliance of bookings by agency," he continued. "We know when any travelers do an expense report if it was booked through our designated agency."

Global compliance reports now are distributed monthly to senior management. "The goal is to get to 100 percent compliance," Reynaert said. "Senior management is behind this as they know the savings that compliance equals. The only way to get it is to provide the service behind it. If you have dedicated agents who can provide all the service, go to bat for you with hotels or get a waiver of a fee or penalty, travelers will comply."

To sell the plan to senior management, Reynaert told them that " 'our people need to get on the road to do their jobs. I don't want them to be travel agents, to have to surf the web for travel deals. That's my job, or that of the two dedicated people on the team.' "

One of the dedicated resources runs the help desk for Concur. "Anytime a traveler has an issue with the booking or expense tools, operations, or the profile not syncing correctly with PeopleSoft, we provide our own help desk internally. That's one reason I think our compliance is as high as it is." About 85 percent of eligible bookings now are booked online, he added.

The dedicated resource also generates all compliance reporting from Concur, the Travel GPA benchmarking system and the Cornerstone iBank data tool, all used in the United States. "Reporting out of Europe has some gaps, but we're working on it," Reynaert said. "We get every single itinerary dropped into a folder so when anything is booked, we can access the European records. We'll be able to pull up all agent-booked records in Concur."

[PROFILE_1] Agency Configuration  

Meritor and its veteran agents have done "some unique things on fulfillment," Reynaert said. "We're fulfilling for the United States, Canada, Mexico and Australia through our onsite with my two dedicated agents and our North America-based travel agency."

Even though tickets are issued in U.S. dollars, Reynaert said, "Our volume in Australia is only $150,000, so it doesn't warrant airline negotiation." Service fees in Australia for international tickets, he said, were $100 to $150.

By configuring Concur and its Travel Fusion interface to grab web fares, Reynaert said, "we're able to book Virgin Australia's $300 roundtrip web fare" instead the $800 average fare between Melbourne and Brisbane, Meritor's top city pair in Australia.

"Not only did we eliminate the high booking fees, we also lowered our average ticket costs," he said. "It's not a whole lot of volume, so it doesn't warrant us trying to launch a whole other agency." Travelers can book in Concur 24/7, Reynaert said, and should they need assistance, after-hours support is available. Most travel is booked at least seven days in advance.

[PULL_1]Compliance Grows  

Meritor altered its travel policy as part of the new program. One change was designed to boost compliance and employee satisfaction. Instead of pre-trip approval for every trip, the company now requires pre-trip approvals in four instances: when fares cost more than $1,000; when travel is booked less than seven days in advance; when the traveler doesn't accept a fare within $100 of the lowest logical airfare; and for intercontinental travel.

"Everything else is automatically approved," and managers have a 24-hour window to void a trip, Reynaert said. "That immediately bumped our compliance, prompted travelers to book further in advance and drove our average ticket price down."

Duty of care is emphasized. "If you bypass our systems, we're unable to service and help you," he said.

Responding to economic slowdowns in Europe and China, Meritor recently made some other policy changes to "restrict travel," he added. "We're basically economy [class] across the globe. We've written a policy to accept premium economy."

Reynaert said he has used global data to negotiate with hotels in top cities. "I will make the calls myself and have a manageable amount of locations with 64 around the globe." In top international destinations, Reynaert said he has briefed admins on how to negotiate and what to say, and provided a "vision statement on travel globalization and letter to explain the program."

"The service level to our travelers has just gone through the roof, and it's driving compliance and savings," Reynaert said. "We're getting savings from the lowest logical airfare, staying at preferred hotels and spending less by booking further in advance. The net projection is savings of about $1 million on $16 million in spend."

Reynaert said he has used insight gained from 30 years in travel management, starting from his days at Thomas Cook serving the Ford account, where his father managed travel for decades, to a more recent 11-year tenure as a TMC account manager for Travelport. He also has managed travel for Ameritech and Kelly Services, and worked for National Car Rental.