Adelman Travel on Tuesday laid out a strategy to transform its corporate travel division into a "management solutions company" centered on consulting and new technologies. The travel agency previously formalized a consulting group and now is certifying business development managers to be consultants.
"We've expanded our sales organization and increased their responsibilities as part of this strategy," according to a statement from president and COO Steve Cline. Sales personnel "will now consult on a number of items either prior to or during the sales process, including products and configuration, global T&E initiatives or the actual RFP process.
"Over the last decade, we've seen the responsibility for choosing a travel management company migrate from the travel manager position to a company's purchasing department," Cline added. "When we join the bid process, we find this to be true in most instances."
Once a client is secured, Adelman's consultants regularly monitor various key performance indicators.
In terms of technology for multinational clients, the TMC has started using an "international fare aggregator" called Adelman Integrated Fares, and also operates the Global Gateway data consolidation system. According to Cline, the two products are of particular utility in markets where clients don't have agency coverage or use a different TMC, as they can "interface with partner agencies or nonpartner agencies."
"Over the past decade, many travel buyers have been engaged in global consolidations with more than one travel management company," Cline added. "They are finding that both the wholly owned travel management companies and the agency networks occasionally have some gaps—not only in service, but in products as well."
Meanwhile, Adelman announced that it's now certified to access Concur's expense platform "to extract data" and help clients better manage program leakage. Concur last year identified Adelman as one of several TMCs using the Concur T&E Cloud platform. The TMC also agreed to resell the Concur Risk Management solution.