<B> McCord Restructures</B>
By Sarah Welt
Chicago - McCord Travel Management recently announced a reorganized management structure that has created five separate business units, and has formed a national implementation team to manage large-scale client startups.
McCord for the first time has broken out its $40 million group travel volume from business travel management. It also created separate units for its Hoffman Entertainment Division, Consumer Direct, Leisure and the Associated Agent Program.
Prior to the reorganization, McCord's business travel was broken out into Central, East and West regions. "But over the past two years we made specific and significant progress in creating a national company," said president and CEO Bruce Black. However, that does not mean McCord plans to lose its regional focus.
"We're creating a company that is very responsive on a national level to the needs of large companies," Black said, "but also is very focused on supporting all of our customers on the regional level--with senior officer attention, the right kind of decision making, and the right kind of product development and tool support."
The company broke out group travel so that it could make a series of investments in technology to support online registration, online convention management and online bookings for large meetings. "We needed to make those investments in group travel services and provide the kind of strategic and financial management of those investments at a higher level on a more consistent basis," Black said. It has developed proprietary Lotus Notes applications for online meeting registration and is developing "Web-based front ends that will allow us to custom-design Web sites for clients--either convention management or group and incentive programs."
The reorganization has led to a series of management changes, though Black was quick to point out that no one lost his job. Former vice president and general manage of the Central region Daniel Keller has been named president of the Business Travel Management unit. Scott Graf was promoted from director to vice president and general manager of Group Travel Services.
All business unit leaders report to Black, who also oversees a new executive management team--COO Bill Wass, CFO Ralph DeLetto and chief strategic officer Andy Cameron. The group will set companywide strategic direction and be located at company headquarters. Their new responsibilities prompted Black to back-fill positions "with the right kind of senior-level talent."
Maria Amoye has been appointed director of operations for the Eastern region. Edward Berkman has been promoted to senior vice president of the business travel unit. He previously served as vice president and general manager of the Eastern region. Carol Dunn has been named senior vice president of the Western region. Jeff Eischen, named vice president and general manager of the Eastern region, is filling Berkman's former role. Misti Cornelius, vice president and general manager of the Central region, is replacing Keller.
The company also has put together a national implementation team after winning several large accounts over the past seven months.
The recent implementaion of the Boston Consulting Group account revealed "significant national implementation issues that needed to be managed in a very effective fashion," Black said. That led the company to want to carry those standards into its day-to-day operations and have "different ways of approaching customer service or account requirements.
"Seven months ago we created a plan for how we would integrate the skills and capabilities to get these implementations done more easily in the kind of time frame that made sense for the client and for us. We applied that consistent approach across the organization so we are not redesigning the process every time," Black said.
Janice Blacksmith has been named director of the team and will report directly to Wass. Since 1996 she has been manager of national accounts. The rest of the team consists of implementation consultants William Coredero, Nicole LaMotte and Kate Stubenvoll. Stubenvoll will be responsible for technology and process integration. La-Motte will be in charge of project management, and Coredero will be responsible for national operations and training.
McCord also is beefing up its technology area, hiring an expert in each of its three regions to work with Paul Craft, vice president of technology, and a team that now numbers 60 people.
In addition, McCord this month plans to introduce both GetThere.com and Sabre BTS on its homepage Web site.