BCD's Dalton discusses:
- Solving for auditor-specific needs with aerospace and defense clients
- New challenges with NDC
- Booking customization plans
Among BCD Travel's specialized client verticals—which include pharmaceutical and media and entertainment—aerospace and defense in recent years has emerged as a "very large portfolio" for the travel management company, said BCD Americas SVP Amy Dalton, who leads the practice. Its portfolio includes about half of the top 10 defense contractors in the world, some of which have been with BCD for more than a decade, she said. Dalton recently spoke with BTN executive editor Michael B. Baker about some of the vertical's specific needs and how BCD is adapting technology to meet them. An edited transcript follows.
BTN: What specific needs do aerospace and defense clients have that other corporate travel programs might not?
Amy Dalton: They require unique needs as it relates to low fares. [There are] government audits, so you have to document lots of things about how you are documenting low fares and getting the best price. It's important to make sure you have technology that allows you to do all that. In the beginning years, way back when, we did it manually, and over the last several years, we have automation doing all of that.
As we're booking those kinds of trips, they're traveling on business but as a defense contractor, so you have to make sure all the requirements are met, so if government auditors come in, they are compliant.
It's important that you understand the space and that you have a lot of customers who drive innovation. We continue to build upon that. They are all unique and different. One aerospace customer has a different audit requirement than the next one. [One] defines low fare this way, and [another] may define low fare this way, based on their auditor. While I would love to create technology that just goes across all, we've had to customize all of our tech stack, even another layer down into that by client, by policy and by program.
BTN: Are they able to share best practices?
Dalton: We've created customer benchmarking with all of their approval, where they get to benchmark anonymously all their statistics among other aerospace and defense companies. We also have a very networked aerospace and defense portfolio. We meet with them as individual clients, but we also have an annual A&D client forum. We bring them all together for several days, and they help create the agenda and topics. It's for them to come together and talk about things in the travel space, the expense space and what they would like to see.
BTN: There of course are evergreen challenges specific to these clients, but what are some of the biggest challenges of the moment?
Dalton: The biggest challenge at the moment is making sure they comply to the lowest fare, and when you add in things like [New Distribution Capability], you lose the transparency sometimes in being able to make sure you can see the lowest fare, particularly if you are offering NDC as a bundle that has other things in it. All of sudden, I'm not comparing an apple to an apple as it relates to low fares. Auditors in our aerospace division don't know how they're going to accommodate for that. If you're still going to sell me a bundle, that' s OK, but I need to know what each component is worth in the bundle to make sure the fare is the lowest fare still.
BTN: How did you end up in this space?
Dalton: I've been with BCD 20-plus years now and handled corporate relationships, global multinationals, energy resource and marine and also aerospace. When I handled aerospace the last 10-plus years, we didn't have it consolidated. We had it sitting under different leaders in the organization. We took a step back, looked at the synergies and saw what a great opportunity it was to continue to build this practice. About five years ago, we pulled it all together into a vertical practice.
BTN: What future plans does BCD have for this space?
Dalton: We plan to continue growing this. We're looking to announce some new awards coming up in the space and also continuing to build our automation. We have our TripSource, and we're in the process of customizing that for aerospace and defense vertical. For us, it's making sure that we grow the vertical, take the success we had and continue to grow the digital footprint that goes with the vertical that helps us innovate. Our tech stacks have to continue to evolve. They have high online adoption, and they use a lot of the tools. Not unlike with corporates, you have to keep driving efficiency and self-serve. We just have to do it uniquely through aerospace.