Nancy Garner
An early proponent of online booking and meeting tools, Extreme Networks global travel manager Nancy Garner tracks both financial and time savings that such automation provides on $3 million to $5 million in annual air spend and more than 30 meetings per year for 10 to 600 attendees. Extreme Networks has used GetThere's booking tools for six years and the GetThere DirectMeetings tools for three years. Recently, the company also extended its Sabre relationship to travel fulfillment, using Travelocity Business in the Europe, Middle East and Africa region. At the National Business Travel Association convention here this week, Garner discussed the benefits of automation with Management.travel. An excerpt follows.
What benefits have you seen from automating your meeting planning and registration?
It's a big help because it's capturing all the information that we need to get the best negotiated discounts from third-party vendors, keep track of all the information we need on our travelers and track hotel manifests and ground transportation. Where it used to take three or four months to get all responses and information, now it only takes us two weeks. The time [savings] is really important, but now we can save money on air and hotel. Privacy is also becoming a big issue. When you outsource meetings to meeting planners and give them all this information--names, titles, email addresses, credit card info--you're leaving yourself open, hoping that everybody on that meeting team is not going to sell or reuse that information. With your own tool, you stop that and can have them work on just what you need them to work on--the logistics for what I need them for. But they don't have the information on my travelers.
How have you gained compliance in using the tool to book all meetings?
We had one person who decided that they didn't want to use the meeting tool for one meeting that just happened. Even though it's part of travel policy that all meetings and groups go through the travel department, they took it on their own that they were going to do this meeting. Two weeks away, they called me and said they needed the manifest list for the ground transportation, and something for hotel. All of a sudden the needs were just like, I need, I need, I need. But I said they missed the boat. They didn't use the meeting tool or call me so I could track it. They said that with Sarbanes-Oxley, you need to track it. I said, "Yes, I can, but you didn't follow the process to do so." There is so much in that meeting tool to solve all those problems. It didn't tie up four or five admins to do this. It empowers the travelers to make choices or changes when they want to--they didn't have to get on the phone to call someone, if they even know who to call. They were dependent on other people to make changes for them. That planner had two meetings going and immediately pulled me in to help with this other one. Already, we cut the cost of that meeting down by $20,000, just by using the meeting tool (and not outsourcing registration to a third party).
You mentioned Sarbanes-Oxley. How has that impacted travel and meetings, and how is technology helping you to support SOX?
On the booking tool, one of the things we now ask is if any of the travel is personal or if it's all business. Sarbanes wants to know if everyone who is traveling is on business because it's taxed a different way. On the meetings side, it makes it very clear who's there for the meeting. A lot of times, we have meetings and they bring their spouses or children. This makes it clear who is there for the meeting, and who is not.
Much of your travel is international, which is often considered a challenge for online booking. What are you actually able to book online?
We do 60 percent international travel, and everyone says it's impossible to do international bookings online. Yet, I've got people doing 10, or even 14 legs. Most of our international travel is over four legs. It tells them right on the tool, this will drop into a queue and we'll look for the best price. Most of the time, the price on the booking tool is not accurate because there are so many ways to price an international ticket. Do they want to upgrade? If so, we might have to pay a little more money to get them into a class that they can upgrade. We have certificates that we can use with our international airlines for upgrades, too. We also have business fares that are not much more than economy. We have all these "what ifs." We want them to pick the best one, but we do not pay for business class. I did a comparison: [auditor] Topaz International had an average international ticket cost of $1,800. Our international ticket cost was around $1,100. I multiplied that out by the number of trips and that was over $1 million in savings. Most of our people are traveling in business class [but] 50-60 percent is traveling in business class due to upgrades that they're doing. Most of my travelers are already 100K [loyalty program members], so they're able to use their perks to upgrade. Even the CEO of our company upgraded using frequent flyer miles. Sometimes if I see this is never going to go because it's sold out, I'll put him in business class. We always get them in that level of service, but we're not paying business class. I love it when they at least start off with the booking tool to know what they want.
You were one of early adopters of both booking and meeting technology. Do you find it difficult to continue to prove the value and savings that you're getting from tools?
I just did a study going back three years to track savings, looking at cost per transactions. Every year we have done more business, but the cost has remained almost the same. If I'm doing 1,000 transactions this month and 1,200 transactions in the same month the following year, and 1,600 the third year and the cost is the same, I'm saving money. People say, "I just found a cheap ticket on an Internet site." I say, "Don't worry about it. We have to have you in our system due to risk management. We have negotiated deals with the airlines. We have rebates coming in on the back end. Whether that ticket is $50 cheaper, or $300 cheaper, don't bother me. If it's over $300 savings, come talk to me and we'll call the airlines and try to do a match." Even our domestic average ticket price is under the Topaz audit.