Lilly Joins A 'Boomlet' Of European Travel Mgrs.
<B> Lilly Joins A 'Boomlet' Of European Travel Mgrs.</B>
By Cheryl Rosen
That old tenet of travel management--that an onsite office is more effective than one far away--appears to be finding a corollary in the global era. American corporations seem increasingly to be deciding that having an onsite European travel manager is well worth the overhead, in savings for the corporation and in service for the traveler.
Dirk Bremer, Eli Lilly's new man on the Continent, is one of a boomlet of European-based travel managers of American corporations that also includes Dresser Industries' Robert Daykin (<I>BTN</I>, Nov. 10, 1997) and Seagram's Jonathan Stobard. 3Com has a full-time European travel manager based at its Morton Grove, Ill., headquarters, and both Seagram and American Management Systems of Fairfax, Va., now have full-time staffers dedicated solely to travel data consolidation in Europe.
Based in Hamburg, Lilly's Bremer comes to the industry with five years procurement experience, though none specifically in travel. Hired by the European strategic procurement group with the support of senior management, he already has gathered representatives from Lilly operations in the Benelux, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Spain, Switzerland and the United Kingdom into a formal European Travel Council charged with identifying ways to make the most of Lilly's $20 million travel tab .
One of the group's first projects will be a preferred hotel directory. In 1998, it will begin to consider efficiencies it might bring to the company's $15-20 million meeting and conference spend, focus on "bringing Eastern Europe into the travel program," and issue an RFP for a single European corporate card. Into 1999, it will begin negotiations--specifically air negotiations--that include both Europe and the United States.
"This is a logical progression for us," said Lilly's U.S.-based corporate travel manager George Odom, to whom Bremer reports. "Travel management in Europe has always been handled from local sites, and we never before had anything official across Europe. But at this point we are operating trans-Europe, and negotiating transatlantic deals out of Europe. You can't do that out of the United States--you need someone local. We said, 'You guys need to develop ways to manage your travel spend.' That made it their program, and not George Odom driving this out of the corporate office."
Bremer already has begun work on a global air program. A request for proposals for a trans-European contract has already been sent to "major European and American carriers" in hopes of producing "one transatlantic and maybe some inter-European route deals." The RFP asks for a "creative approach including net deals, block purchases and prepayment options," but touches on neither CRS contracts nor automated booking systems, despite the fact that Lilly is beta-testing Sabre BTS in the States.
Bremer acknowledged, though, that global agreements are not easily worked out with European carriers--not even by an on-site European travel manager. In fact, he said, the most responsive carriers have been the Americans.
"Most European carriers still have monopolies in their own countries. The American companies interested in our transatlantic business are much more interested in talking to us--and they also believe that we can move market share where the European carriers do not," he said. "I think Siemens has shown that not to be true in the German market--they have shown that you can save huge amounts of money and have made travel management interesting to a lot of companies in Europe."
Lilly has 8,000 employees and $2.5 billion in sales in Europe, Bremer said. While it uses BTI as its consolidated agency in the United States, it is split between Carlson Wagonlit and BTI in Europe--though Bremer acknowledged that his game plan includes the hope that "maybe in three years we'll consolidate with one global agency.