Louise Miller
BCD Travel this month named Louise Miller to the newly created post of executive vice president for global business solutions, sales and marketing. Previously president of BCD's U.S. East division, Miller now is responsible for "the company's commitment to streamline and synchronize key internal and customer-facing areas on a global basis." What follows is an excerpt of her discussion last month with The Transnationalabout trends in multinational travel management, client and traveler needs, and changes at BCD.
What are clients asking for that is relatively new?
There have been a lot of multinational and global consolidations over the years, but clients want a strong foundation with regard to their solutions at the local level, and they want us to build that to operating on the global level. What's new is that technology is evolving so quickly, we need to be able to design solutions that encompass the different needs of travelers and business leaders around the world. We're trying to do that in a more cohesive way.
The travel management practice is pretty mature, but what are clients still missing?
We always start by going back to basics. I think a lot of customers still see an improvement opportunity in basic customer service. Things are changing rapidly for travelers, with technology. It's hard for the road warrior, living in an airport, and for airlines that are struggling because of the infrastructure [issues]. We cannot lose sight of the traveler experience and how we're going to continue to enable that experience in the future. Also, I believe companies are looking to us to balance and leverage their resources better. The management structure that is being used to manage travel is evolving as corporations try to be more agile and want less structure cost. [One company has] the entire travel management department in-house, while the next company splits it and some are our employees and some are theirs. They are figuring out how to balance their procurement and entire supplier relationship management life cycle, and to manage demand. Although we are very mature, I think there are still tools and strategies companies are exploring. The huge emphasis right now is on meetings and expense management.
Is there a next generation for traveler service or any cause for optimism by travelers on service quality?
This is a big topic that we could talk about all day. What we're trying to do is evolve our telephony capabilities, so when there are weather-related or other disruptions--whether in the Americas or Europe or wherever--we have the ability to leverage our resources across the company and get to the travelers. Travelers wait on hold for hours with airlines, or longer than they would like with after-hours service providers. So we take very seriously the investment necessary to have the right evolving telephony platform to get that done. Speech recognition and those kinds of telecom enablers are popular and common with financial call centers and airlines. Travel management companies certainly have deployed them, but there's a better way to use some of those things to make things better for the traveler. In terms of the traveler's experience on the road, a lot of the way the system works today--where you get in this line and get this boarding pass and there's paper--will change with technology. Personal digital assistants will be even more useful, where you can swipe a bar code on the PDA [for boarding].
If the European Union partially deregulates global distribution system companies, what will be the impact for buyers' access to fares and inventory?
Buyers didn't want to have to worry about fragmented content. In Europe, it's good timing in a strange way, because processes, resources and infrastructure are designed around an already fragmented environment, and we're more prepared to deal with it. This is different from in the United States, where the processes are more automated and where we're used to getting more than 90 percent of the content from the GDS.
How is your new role different from the way those responsibilities were organized previously?
The big thing is bringing together the sales and marketing organizations and finding new ways to grow BCD through those resources. Part of our vision is to transcend the traditional sales organization. We bring a lot of global business management experience to the sales and marketing organization, which I think is different for us. The other thing is to increase our voice and have positive influence in driving the market. Our message and performance has really strengthened our brand, and now we need to use that strength to a greater degree than we have in the past two years.