ICO Develops Global Travel Strategies With GTM

<B> ICO Develops Global Travel Strategies With GTM</B>

By Amon Cohen

<I>London</I> - When a company sends its employees to every country in the world, travel is not merely a cost to be contained, it becomes a core element of corporate strategy.

Such is the case with ICO, the mobile satellite communications company that was founded in 1995 and will launch its full service in 2000. While ICO has only 340 employees, 75 percent of them are frequent travelers, who notch up almost $40,000 in travel expenses apiece each year, for a company total of $10 million.

ICO travel manager Christine Dawson has developed numerous strategies to guide the dispersed and often exotic travel patterns of her travelers. She also has learned to be fleet of foot. With rapid expansion and enormous logistical and security considerations, ICO grants Dawson the autonomy to act decisively as she develops a flexible global service for her travelers. Indeed, ICO's flat organizational structure means that travel management decision-making more or less begins and ends with her alone.

Twice a week, ICO puts out an information sheet that explains where new offices are being opened and who is joining the company. "It is up to me to find out about how the company is developing and then go to the new offices and ask if they have thought about travel arrangements," Dawson said. "Obviously, I have someone I report to, but he doesn't tell me I have got an office opening and I had better make some arrangements."

As soon as Dawson sees that the number of new employees in an office is growing, she decides whether to introduce a travel office there. "I am given a lot of leeway in the decision, so there is no long, drawn-out process. I tell my boss whether we need the office," she said. At present, ICO has offices in Beijing, Dubai, Istanbul, London, Los Angeles, Miami, Moscow, Mumbai, Pretoria, Sao Paolo, Singapore, Toronto and Washington.

Dawson makes her assessment of the need for local travel representation by visiting each new office in person. To get a detailed picture of the region's specific travel requirements and difficulties, she presents each with a questionnaire that asks about the number of employees, their estimated travel spend, main destinations and percentage of domestic versus international travel.

Whether the office gets local representation or not, its travel arrangements are handled by global alliance GTM Travel Management. At present, 80 percent of ICO's employees are based in London, which was where the company made contact with GTM in 1996, when it chose U.K. member The Travel Company as its travel service provider.

Today, each ICO office is serviced either from London by The Travel Company or by a local GTM partner, as is the case in Singapore, Turkey and the United States. More offices are expected to switch to their local GTM partner shortly.

Both ICO and GTM were created in the mid-1990s and Dawson has found the evolutionary similarity of the two a good fit. "We are going through the same learning phase," she said. "If we had gone through an established company with established practices, I don't think that would have worked for us. GTM is very flexible--it asks us what we need and then goes away and finds solutions."

Not all of those solutions have been found yet. GTM's Turkish member, Tekser, is providing high service levels but has not yet come up with meaningful management information, Dawson said. She is looking to GTM to fulfill its management requirements by finding a way to integrate Tekser's data with that of its fellow members.

As well as hiring a worldwide travel service provider, Dawson also has devised several internal processes to achieve effective global management. In each office, tickets are not released to the traveler unless they have been booked through an authorized agency with a travel requisition form.

There also is a global travel policy to be followed, albeit a fairly benign one. Almost all flying is in business class, a recognition of the fact that most ICO travelers are in an aircraft every week. However, careful research has shown Dawson that each market has its exceptions. In India, for example, business people invariably fly first class domestically, so that has been built into the travel policy, which has been modified for each country.

Dawson also has compiled an advice guide on every country in the world based on the experiences of ICO travelers. It notes countries where laptops checked into the hold fail to emerge, where it is cheaper to buy direct from the airline with a payment card rather than through an agency, and where airport staff won't release a pre-paid ticket on departure unless it is paid for again on the spot.

Perhaps Dawson's biggest headache is visas, not only because of the range of countries visited but the cosmopolitan nature of ICO personnel. The worst incident so far was when three employees--a Briton, a Frenchman and an American--had to change flights at Beijing, which necessitated transferring between airport buildings. None of the three travelers realized that they needed transit visas simply to complete this transfer. The Briton was allowed through, the French passport-holder was fined and also eventually allowed through, but the American was fined and detained overnight.

To help minimize incidents of this nature, ICO is insisting that all GTM personnel who handle the account are themselves experienced travelers.

Dawson also is organizing comprehensive security procedures. She currently has a bid out for a company to provide training to staff and evacuation plans for every country in the world.

"We want to know how our travelers will be able to communicate in each country in an emergency and who the local contact will be," she said. "That will mean someone with political contacts, perhaps in the army. It is expensive but we cannot take a chance."

The global traveling is expensive for ICO in another way. Its $10 million spend is evenly distributed around the world, leaving little scope for Dawson to cut route deals. The information now starting to flow through from GTM and the Diners Club account are helping, but Dawson is still a long way from her ambition of securing international air agreements. The nearest she can get to such an agreement is for her preferred suppliers in Britain to take the spending of other offices into account if ICO misses its targets in the United Kingdom.

From her experience of building ICO's travel program, Dawson has three pieces of advice to share with fellow travel managers of new, fast-expanding companies. First, she said, get travelers accustomed to the idea of a travel policy as early as possible. Then make the policy fit the company philosophy so that travelers respect it and are self-policing. Then establish as short a travel management decision-making process as possible.

GTM general manager Bob Booth adds three more lessons he has drawn from ICO: 1) Outsource travel wherever possible to like-minded partners and stick to your core business; 2) Implement a consistent payment system, especially by use of corporate cards; and 3) Get good, usable management information feeds from your card supplier and agent.