The energy, resources and marine vertical of corporate
managed travel is emerging from its silo, combining fragmented content and
global support much like travel management companies' traditional corporate
travel offerings.
BCD Travel and CWT each have revamped their ERM platforms to
put all legs of the trip—from commercial like plane and hotel to logistical
like boat, helicopter, charter plane, bus and crew camp—on one platform. "Because of
the unique service requirements of energy, resources and marine operations,
businesses in these sectors generally rely on highly specialized travel agents
that often work in manual processes and are set up separately from their
corporate travel service," said BCD SVP of the Americas Amy Dalton, who
will oversee BCD's ERM practice. "We can bring together both crew and
corporate services into a single program." BCD said a single
platform for all travel agents now enables round-the-clock, live support from
informed agents, an improvement on BCD's formerly regional service.
Both BCD and CWT also highlight their one-stop-shop booking
platforms for travel arrangers. CWT VP
of global technology and services for ERM Peter Brady emphasized the need to
empower both travel arrangers and travel agents in the ERM space, in which 40
percent of the complex itineraries change after booking.
What it comes down to is that each TMC is corralling
commercial booking content and ERM booking content into a single workflow, and
from that centralization flows improvements in each service, data reporting,
disruption management and traveler tracking.
BCD's ERM Upgrade
Before Ross Pratt, BCD VP of global business development for
ERM, joined the TMC in November 2017, the ERM arm served clients regionally,
offering nothing to serve large clients across multiple regions, he said. A
client may have used BCD for the 80 percent of its travel business that was
corporate and used another agency for the 20 percent that was crew, he
explained. "Now, we're looking at clients that are 80 percent crew and 20
percent corporate because we're able to support that a lot better from a global,
24/7 solution." Indeed, the offering already has pulled in one of the world's largest oil field
services providers as a client, according to BCD.
Dalton said BCD is placing ERM agents in specific spots around the
world in order to provide round-the-clock service regardless of travelers'
locations. And the agents all work on a single platform whether they're
handling crew, contractors, corporate or anything in between. The system allows
different workflows for different types of travelers, as determined by the traveler's
profile. Pratt said the varying workflows guide agents to what reporting needs
to be captured, what form of payment to get and other aspects that differ by
traveler type. "We've built the technology to really flow from the
traveler type, so once I know who you are, I can follow a process that's
streamlined just for you," he said.
The platform takes advantage of BCD's TripSource, including
the
TripSource Profile Manager enhancement that's powered by SAP's
Customer Data Cloud solution and that will roll out in the second half of this
year. For a company's oil rig crewmembers, for example, BCD could turn off the
ability to book hotel or air, leaving those travelers to use TripSource just
for itinerary management while travel arrangers handle the planning.
In addition to centralized technology, BCD's ERM platform
also leverages centralized supplier agreements and offers a central support
desk. More capabilities for travel bookers/arrangers also mean more personal agency.
"Everything BCD has built technologywise has been a lot around the
traveler having more interaction," Pratt said. "In this space, it's a
lot more around an arranger or a booker, so we've had to put together some
technologies, whether that's an online tool or travel request form or things
like that. So we are building out technologies that'll be more interactive for
bookers."
The ERM platform also links up with BCD's business
intelligence and data visualization tool, DecisionSource, which powers not only
trip and spend reporting but also traveler tracking. BCD's ERM team had to
approach DecisionSource a bit differently from its typical managed travel
colleagues. For ERM clients, DecisionSource digests the data by traveler type,
whether corporate traveler, crew, contractor, family, recruit or others. BCD
also feeds in additional data sources. "Traditional traveler tracking
doesn't work well with one-way travel" or for long-term and ex-pat
assignments, Pratt noted. "Where the PNR ended, that's where the traveler
tracking ended." For a traveler who took a plane to Morocco and then a
one-hour bus to a hotel, the bus and hotel often were not tracked. BCD
integrates with whichever of those last-mile suppliers are technologically
capable in order to to capture traveler data. That could mean taking passenger logs from a
bus company or even RFID scans of worker badges at mining sites.
The new platform also centralizes security efforts and feeds data to
emergency-response suppliers. The TMC's ERM arm also offers risk mapping, asset
mapping, alerts, access to a crisis management team and trip disruption
services. Pratt offered the example of a mechanic traveling with a replacement
part for a broken-down oil rig. The technology notifies an agent if, say, the
traveler is likely to miss a connecting flight. Any rebooking fee likely would
pale in comparison to the money the rig is losing while out of commission, so BCD
can automate and customize rebooking authorizations. One client might allow any
rebooking under $5,000, and another might authorize any rebooking under $500 but
request a loop-in call for anything higher.
CWT's Unified
Workflow
As corporations have identified ERM travel as ripe for boosting
efficiency, third-party logistics specialists have cropped up, said
Brady. "The problem with that is they're not integrated with commercial
travel." Thus CWT has created a single platform on which travel arrangers
can book both commercial and specialized ERM content.
The centralized platform for travel arrangers also
translates into one itinerary for the traveler via the MyCWT app and will mean
better total trip cost reporting. "One of the things you hear consistently
[from clients] is, 'Do you know: We don't actually have the data end to end in
one place. ... We can't see the cost components ... brought together in one
place,'" Brady said. That goes for the cost of flying a single traveler
from home to an oil rig or an entire crew rotation. And, he noted, if corporations
can't see that cost, they can't manage it.
As CWT has been fine-tuning its ERM platform revamp—it was
ready to go in January, Brady said—the TMC has been working on ERM data
reporting sticking points: What do clients want to see, how do they need to see
it, what are the problems they're trying to solve for key stakeholders. In
short: "How do we present that data to provide them with actionable
intelligence?" The TMC has just completed a pilot for an ERM data
reporting solution, and Brady said a product might come to market in the fourth
quarter. Corporations then could avail themselves of the existing CWT Travel
Consolidator tool if they want to analyze ERM and more typical corporate travel
together.
Also on the way: An ERM team is working on trip disruption,
crisis management and traveler well-being, according to Brady. A CWT press
release said the offering will give travel managers "accurate, real-time
information on each traveler," but Brady declined to provide further
details.
The Big Difference: Content
& How It Gets There
Each BCD and CWT have access to traditional corporate travel
booking content via global distribution systems, but how to get unique ERM
content and put it on the same interface as the commercial content? BCD uses
application programming interface connections that allow workforce management
systems, other ERM-arena suppliers and aggregators to feed content into
TripSource, Pratt said.
CWT started down the same API path but deemed the task
Sisyphean, considering the infinite number of potential sources. Instead, Brady
said, generic GDS content, CWT negotiated fares and clients' negotiated fares
feed into the interfaces of a curated group of workforce and logistics
management systems: Nordic firm Tieto; Australia's Bright; INX, which has
offices in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Canada; Singapore's Compas;
California-based Innfinity; and Australia's Trobexis. Pushing the content to
those systems allows the travel arranger to work within the broader site
operations with which they're already familiar. "What we had to do was
really look at: Who are those third-party software systems that make sense for
us to be spending our time with?" Brady said of CWT's strategy. "We
can't partner with everybody; partnering is really important."
BCD, meanwhile, is bringing in all the content sources it
can. Crew camps and other suppliers with their own property management
systems can use the TripSource APIs, and BCD can create PMSs for other suppliers.
Pratt said BCD also searches for additional content to fill its coffers. In
South Texas, for example, where crew camps and hotels often are full, BCD will search
for and digitize analog offerings, such as houses that have been converted to
apartments to fill the market's shortage.
For traditional content, BCD has built its ERM platform on a
single GDS. "We had to start somewhere," Pratt said, though the
platform eventually will be GDS agnostic. He said digitizing analog content and
aggregating disparate sources lends transparency to the booking options and
power to the travel arranger. On a unified platform, for example, BCD can
preference a crew camp that's already paid for.
Amex GBT's Offering
As head of the energy, mining and marine division for American
Express Global Business Travel, Allan Davidson joined GBT when it acquired
HRG in July. He's in his eighth month overseeing the consolidation
of the two legacy programs. GBT, like BCD and CWT, is focusing on delivering a
consistent platform globally. For GBT, as for CWT, the cornerstone of a global program is a single agent platform for all energy resource/mining agents. GBT's
energy, mining and marine agents are located in 15 markets around the world.
Davidson, like BCD's Pratt and CWT's Brady, said a globalized platform
translates to 24/7 live-agent support. "This is a global space we're
working within," Davidson said. "We're targeting global customers,
and if we only look from a local aspect, we're not going to be able to deliver
on the customer's requirements."
He added that GBT's global platform is helping those GBT clients
that had disjointed programs or that have grown through acquisition to
consolidate their energy, mining and marine programs. A global platform also will
aid scalability, which is on Davidson's mind as he looks to the future. His
program also taps into GBT's Expert Care travel risk management solution.
While GBT can gather disparate content sources via API,
aggregator, manual data feeds and integrations with workforce management
systems, Davidson emphasized GBT agents' role in arranging travel, while CWT
and BCD highlight the travel-arranging power their platforms grant to their
clients. Davidson did say, however, that GBT is helping customers that are so
inclined to automate their processes. The ultimate benefit of that is real-time
information on compliance, spend and the locations of both individuals and assets,
such as vessels.
Is BCD Moving on
CWT's Turf?
BCD announced its ERM revamp on March 14, just three weeks after BCD
announced it would bolster its government services
efforts. Both were conspicuous moves, considering ERM and government services
each have been CWT strongholds.
Pratt said BCD's ERM move isn't about competition but rather about
client needs. He inferred, though, that CWT had allowed a window of opportunity
to open for BCD: "I worked at CWT in the ERM space for several
years, and I know that they're a great company. I think they made some
decisions over the last four or five years in the direction they're going that
clients have seen as not favorable. So what we saw was a need for someone else
to come in and play in the space. So with the HRG/Amex merger, where HRG had
basically put on hold for the last few years their energy group—now they're
coming back out—CWT had I guess lost some of the passion for that side of the
business. And I think BCD saw it as an opportunity to give a new avenue to the
clients. Customers wanted a different option. All they used to have was
CWT."
A BCD spokesperson added that BCD simply is in a
good position to up its game: "BCD is a privately owned company, and we're
in a very good position when it comes to our debt, our ability to invest. We
are sinking 40 percent of EBITDA back into innovation and infrastructure, and
John Snyder—our CEO—and John Fentener van Vlissingen—our owner—and our
executive team have a very aggressive growth strategy right now. And this is
independent of what the competition is doing. It's independent of what Amex or
CWT or whoever is doing. It's just part of what they envision BCD Travel doing
and becoming. ... This is all part of a larger, longer strategic plan."