Last night at the historic
Blackstone Hotel, part of the Autograph Collection, BTN recognized ZS Associates'
travel operations coordinator Suzanne Boyan as the 2019 Travel Manager of the
Year. BTN editor-in-chief Elizabeth West announced the winner, chosen by BTN editors
from nominations submitted by the industry.
"BTN's 2019 Travel Manager
of the Year has opened an omni-channel booking strategy to her company's
business travelers. She's a critical travel thinker operating in the midmarket,
who's been reading the technology tea leaves and decided to take a risk. Rather
than driving her program toward the traditional TMC model, she has altered the
structure in a way that keeps the TMC in play but also offers a direct booking
channel underpinned by a data management strategy that keeps her travelers
supported and the company informed—for duty of care, for volume and share
negotiations and business success," West told those attending BTN's annual
Travel Manager of the Year reception. "She has worked directly with
technology and service providers like ISOS, Freebird, Traxo and Tripbam. She
has taken on an additional internal headcount to support the strategy."
West
added: "With a goal to shift 50 percent of her company's travel volume
through direct channels, she said the trade-off is an easy calculus. She's
cutting service fees and distribution costs, pinpointing the value of the TMC
to her program and translating it all to bottom line savings—while giving travelers
choice. The technologists say it's the future of the industry, couched in slick
terms like 'microservices' and 'travel program architect.' Specialized
consultancies have emerged to advise clients to do what she's already done.
Even so, she'll face a lot of questions as she rolls the program out globally,
but she's prepared."
BTN also recognized its 2019 Best
Practitioners during the event. Each was awarded for excellence in a single
practice within their overall program:
Pam
Massey, deputy director of global travel and mobility for the Bill &
Melinda Gates Foundation—In an age of critical environmental
concerns, Massey led the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's travel program
to address air travel carbon emissions with a carbon-offsetting program. She has
done so by working with Delta on a partnership that obligates Delta to honor carbon-offset
payments when the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation meets its contracted
volume thresholds. The model had kept environmental concerns at the forefront
of travelers' minds when booking travel. It sets an example for other ecoconscious
companies and organizations to invest in sustainable travel management
practices as part of their strategic mission.
Erin
McWilliams, travel operations manager for Epic—McWilliams
had a traveler engagement issue, with employees that lacked trust in the
program. With help from her travel management company, Fox World Travel, she
began the process of Journey Mapping, which gave insights into recurring needs
and travel issues associated with particular travelers. Building on that
knowledge, McWilliams created the Traveler BFF program, pairing travelers with
Epic's internal travel arrangers so that each arranger had a specialized
understanding of a specific set of business travelers and now delivers advice
and itineraries that take specific travel needs and journey pain points into
consideration.
Steve
Sitto, senior manager of travel, meetings and mobility for Tesla—Travel
program simplification has been Sitto's mantra since taking on the travel,
meetings and mobility management role at Tesla. Rapid organic growth and corporate
acquisitions have significantly magnified the scope of his program in the past
three years, but Sitto has remained dedicated to providing a simplified policy
and process driven by technology and relevant digital communication within the
workflow. He has used expense data and robotics process automation to generate
personalized compliance communications, and with BCD Travel, he has implemented
dynamic messaging on the SAP Concur Travel booking tool to guide users not only
toward compliance but also to suggest optimized choices to meet contractual
obligations. Transparency has gotten results. Lowest logical fare compliance is
above 97 percent and hotel compliance is nearly 91 percent.
Meghann
Welch, VP of business initiatives and senior manager for Wells Fargo Meetings
& Events—Data management starts with process
management and the right technology support. Welch has implemented meetings as
a business process management initiative that touches all parts of Wells Fargo.
This not only controls the meeting contracting and budget approval process but also
captures spend and savings data that many strategic meetings management
programs still struggle to record at a granular level. The result is business
intelligence that truly drives decision-making and business transformation.