<B>Deutsche Bank Takes SAP</B>
By Amon Cohen
Eschborn, Germany - Deutsche Bank is piloting the SAP online booking and travel accounting system in Germany and plans to roll it out in the United States later this summer.
Christiane Heck, global head of travel, wants all 40,000 travelers within the bank to use SAP for their reservations. Her "very conservative" estimate is that she will see a return on investment in two years, saving 5 percent on her company's annual travel bill.
The customized SAP product, which has been renamed Genesis internally, is part of a massive commitment Deutsche Bank has made to managing its travel processes since Heck moved from her position as head of travel management for Asea Brown Boveri Germany in January 2000. When she joined, the bank only had four travel managers, of which one was part time, plus a small amount of administrative support. Today, there are 17 full-time travel managers around the world, plus two part timers.
SAP has been working on its travel product for several years, but Deutsche Bank is one of the first companies actually to implement it on an international basis. However, Heck is not afraid to deal with new players in the marketplace. She is in the process of agreeing to major air deals with a couple of airline alliances and has consolidated the bank's travel with recently formed global travel agency TQ3 in Germany and numerous other countries.
The two main exceptions to the TQ3 consolidation are the United Kingdom and the United States, where the bank retains Sabre-based Advanced Travel Management. However, although SAP initially collaborated exclusively with Amadeus, it recently started working with Sabre, which will make it possible to roll out Genesis stateside, as well as in Europe. The United Kingdom and Asia/Pacific--principally Deutsche Bank's regional head office in Singapore--will follow next year.
"We are going to use it for everything, including rail," Heck said. "We hope that by year-end all U.S. and German travelers will be using it." Heck believes she will achieve her ambitious adoption targets because of her considerable investment in traveler education through a series of roadshows. "We found that in cases where Genesis was not wanted, it was usually because of a lack of information," she said.
There also will be reassurance for travelers in the form of well-manned help desks. Above all, Heck is confident that the benefits of Genesis will be apparent for the traveler, as well as for the company. "They see it does not take any longer than calling the travel agent," she said, adding that "They like selecting their own seats on the aircraft and using maps that plot both Deutsche Bank locations and our preferred hotels.
"The best thing of all is the interface with the accounting system," Heck continued. "Booking information pops up directly in the automated expense management tool and exchange rates are calculated automatically by Reuters. We also have a 'magic button.' Press this and the people in charge of approval will receive the expense claim wherever they are, and the traveler will be reimbursed within three working days."
Considering that manual expense claims take up to six weeks to be reimbursed at the bank, this is a substantial improvement. For Heck, the introduction of Genesis is also a good fit with DB's worldwide strategy. "The main purpose is to have one global process," she said. "Deutsche Bank wants to establish itself as one global company."
The risk this runs, of course, is of imposing solutions that do not work at an operational level locally. Heck is extremely conscious of this danger and has consulted extensively with travelers and bookers throughout the bank's national markets to ensure that Genesis is customized to their needs.
Genesis also gives Heck control of Deutsche Bank travel spending data. The expense management tool takes a feed from agency bookings and card expenditures, as well as online reservations, giving her, in effect, an integrated data warehouse. "This will ensure that the quality of the data will be consistent and we will be able to manage and control our own information, making us independent and able to trust what we see," Heck said.
Gaining a detailed knowledge of travel expenditure was Heck's number-one priority when she joined. Quizzing the bank's regions about their travel spend proved an exacting task, demanding much patience, and there still are some gaps in coverage today, especially concerning hotel expenditure.
It also became clear early on that Deutsche Bank needed to consolidate its travel agencies and corporate card suppliers if it was to produce a high quality of management information. One country alone, with a small travel volume, was using eight different agencies.
Heck has achieved small economies of scale through agency consolidation, but said the main aim has been to reduce the number of sources for data collection and streamline operational processes. "It is the efficiency of processes that is important," she said. "The next step will be working with agents on service. We want to make sure, for instance, that all companies within TQ3, and other chains, offer the same service level. When we have all the agencies on a similar high level, we will benchmark and set the same standard throughout the bank."
One thing that will not happen is consolidation to a single agency worldwide. "There are no financial benefits, and I prefer to have competition within the bank," Heck said. "There may only be two or three, but there will be at least two." The situation regarding cards is similar. All the bank's major offices use a corporate card, except for Germany itself. This will be streamlined by Deutsche Bank launching its own card in association with Air Plus. It will become standard issue for the bank's own travelers.
Consolidation also is a work in progress on the supplier front, with Heck able to start negotiating now that she has decent management information at her fingertips. As far as air is concerned, Heck has decided to deal at the alliance level. Alliances have provoked much skepticism among travel managers wary of competition being diminished, but Heck is in favor of them. "They are very interested in working with us as alliances--they really want our business," she said.
Whereas they would not have presented a united front a couple of years ago, Heck finds alliances now are able to send her just one rep who can offer a properly coordinated deal that is fully endorsed by all partners. She also is striving to sign more net fare deals, but is less inclined to sign up to pay at lift, which Lufthansa does with 34 clients in Germany. "At the moment, I am not convinced of the advantages for the bank. We would have a lot of back-office costs to ensure that we get the management information," Heck said.
Even more needs to be done on the hotel program. Travelers are supposed to use properties in the preferred hotel directory, but compliance is not as high as it could be. Implementation of the SAP online booking system, which includes a policy filter, should help to rectify this problem. So, too, should Heck's determination to succeed in her task of implementing a complete travel program, which has been given steel by explicit endorsement from senior management in the form of chief purchasing officer Helmut Flockerzi.
"My boss came from a company with a tough travel management program and he recognized very early at the bank that travel was not being organized, identified and controlled globally," she said. Under Heck's stewardship, that problem is being solved very rapidly.