CWT Restructures Account Focus

<B> CWT Restructures Account Focus</B>

By Sarah Welt

<I>Ft. Lauderdale</I> - Carlson Wagonlit Travel has begun to reorganize itself to manage customers globally with single accountability, focusing on management around the customer rather than around pure geographic regions.

The philosophy seems to be a natural outgrowth of a process and technology reengineering that began three years ago.

CEO Travis Tanner said the shift from geographic region to customer focus has just begun and will evolve slowly. "One person is accountable around the world. It doesn't mean that people in those other countries won't work in conjunction with their local country management but the accountability will sit in one place from now on," he said.

The organizational changes will translate to the way management is structured. Tanner said the company is not planning to have a new president of North America, but rather one person in charge of customers and another heading up operations (<I>BTN,</I> Aug. 17). "We do plan to bring in a chief operating officer under me who will run operations around the world so that we can be consistent," Tanner said. "That is something we are working on now but we are not in a rush to do that."

He plans to be more hands on now that the Carlson Wagonlit merger is behind him. "I think we've worked hard on our strategy and reengineering," he said. "I am very confident about implementing that, which means it is time for the CEO to get back involved with the day-to-day, which I haven't been."

Business Advisory Services, meanwhile, has been going full-steam ahead as well. The consulting arm that was launched a year ago in North America is well on its way to meeting its goal of signing eight clients this year, said senior vice president of expense management and strategic planning Mylle Mangum. The U.S. organization a month ago hired Lee Esler as vice president of business development to concentrate solely on the domestic consulting unit. Carlson Wagonlit is in the process of filling the same position in Europe.

Business Advisory Services plans on "increasing our presence in Europe and increasing our coverage in terms of not only our business process redesign--the analysis piece--but getting in and implementing some expense management systems with clients," Mangum said. "We are actually doing outsourcing in terms of supplier negotiations, not just helping them, but actually doing it for them."

Carlson Wagonlit's global reengineering process, Project Mercury, is being implemented in the north central region. Tanner said he can't talk about its key components now, though he soon will. Mercury is more than point-of-sale technology, "it is a total end-to-end processing change," he noted.

In addition to the internal changes going on, Carlson Wagonlit is moving its headquarters from Ft. Lauderdale to Atlanta (<I>BTN,</I> Sept. 14). Tanner said right now there are two groups of headquarter executives--with 100 people in Atlanta and 18 in Florida--and "while I would prefer to stay here, we need one headquarters and I'd rather have 18 people relocate than 100.