Invensys Reinvents Travel Program
Invensys Reinvents Travel Program
Company: Invensys
Headquarters: London
U.S. air spend: $60 million
When 18-year industry veteran Cyndi Perper stepped into her role as global commodity manager of travel for U.K.-based Invensys, she found the company's recent merger and substantial corporate reorganization had left its travel program neglected. Two years later, Perper continues to build upon a global program that she created from the ground up.
"It was an all-of-a-sudden kind of thing," Perper said of taking on her position at Invensys. "All the wrong ways to do things were done and eight months later they hired me to clean up the mess. They didn't tell me there was this big strife going on in the company and that two travel managers had come and gone in that interim before I was hired. When I took on the job, I thought I was completing a global rollout." In fact, Perper was just beginning the global rollout. After the merger of Siebe and BTR, the newly formed Invensys selected travel as the first internal program to consolidate. "It's been an interesting journey because travel has really been the first out there," she said. "We've been sort of the pioneer. The other purchasing areas at Invensys are just beginning to consolidate and they've taken a lot of our pain and strife."
After joining Invensys, Perper faced the challenge of centralizing the fragmented travel program and initiated a global travel council to assess the damage and rebuild. The council unanimously decided to start over with a new agency and global travel policy, as well as a new online booking tool and card program. Although the bid for American Express' corporate card was completed prior to her arrival, Perper said Invensys had not yet centralized the program to facilitate reporting. After a year of concentrated efforts and cooperation with the finance department, Perper had a working U.S. card program. Europe stands by to roll out the Amex card.
Meanwhile, with council members originally based in the United States, the travel council has grown to comprise three regional teams and a global team. "After the merger, the transition was not a good thing at all," she said. "There were a lot of independent travel agencies handling the business and there were huge cultural changes within the company."
Perper initially aimed to put a consolidated global agency in place. However, she wanted to be flexible enough to ensure the agency would be right for each region. Although she selected TQ3 Maritz Travel Solutions to replace Carlson Wagonlit in the United States, she wanted each international team to choose the agency that best suited its regional market. After Perper and the regional teams went out to bid in Europe and Asia, TQ3 was selected across the board and Invensys had its global agency.
With a consolidated agency and rewritten travel policy in place, the process of globalizing online booking continues to challenge Perper. She first laid the foundation for online booking in the United States, selecting Amadeus E-Travel in 2001. She planned to roll out internationally during the past year, but did not start making progress in extending the program to Europe until recently. "We've committed to having E-Travel in the United States because it's tied into Amadeus, which really covers all of Europe," she said. Usage of online booking in Europe still is fragmented. In Italy, travelers already are using a version of E-travel, while Germany, France and the United Kingdom still await the implementation of a tool. "It's very frustrating when you realize that you're a more global company than all of your suppliers," Perper said, pointing to the online booking challenges as well as negotiating air contracts, which proved a daunting task last year in the United Kingdom.
The chairman of Invensys, Lord Colin Marshall, also serves as a non-executive chairman for British Airways, which made suppliers hesitant to negotiate with Invensys. While many U.S.-based airline vendors foresaw the obvious choice of selecting BA as its primary U.K. carrier, Perper surprised them when she selected American Airlines, pushing British Airways to secondary status. "Obviously, you need the flag carrier because you have all of those internal flights and they're the ones that are going to be servicing them," she said. "But over the water, for an American carrier to make headway with a British company, especially ours, was a big feat."