Murphy Takes First Global BTN Prize
<H1> Murphy Takes First Global BTN Prize</H1>By David Meyer
<I>Madrid </I>- When Hanna Murphy, manager of corporate travel and fleet agreements for Siemens Corp., was called to the ACTE Global podium to receive the first-ever <I>Business Travel News</I> International Travel Manager of the Year award here last month, the crowd clearly endorsed the editorial choice.
Anyone who has ever come into contact with this innovative business executive knows that she is one of travel management's very best practitioners. She has constantly and consistently redefined her role and set an example for her peers. And in the preceding year, her accomplishments were particularly noteworthy.
That's the measure <I>BTN</I> has used for 12 years in recognizing a North American Travel Manager of the Year. Indeed, this year's recipient of the North American award, Colleen Guhin, corporate travel manager for Texas Instruments, was a qualified contestant for this distinction as well, particularly in light of her leadership during the past year in getting several large travel buyers and mega agencies to benchmark the costs of European travel services.
Now that travel management is coming of age internationally, <I>BTN</I> is proud to additionally spotlight the accomplishments of the travel manager who did the most in the previous year to advance the globalization of our industry.
Hanna Murphy is a clear winner not only because of her efforts this year, but also over the past several years, and likely for several years to come.
In the past year, after completing her efforts to help Siemens' European organizations consolidate travel, and while continuing to run the U.S. travel purchasing operation, Murphy began to work on consolidating the company's South American travel expenditures. But she didn't stop there; she began shouldering new responsibilities that lead her company to realize the promise of smart cards for airline and travel expense management purposes.
A large part of what Murphy accomplished in the past year began in 1994, when Karl-Heinz Jörk, senior Siemens purchasing executive in Munich, set up a travel council among the five largest operating companies in Europe and asked Murphy to serve as outside consultant. As with Murphy's earlier efforts working with the U.S. Siemens travel council, she estimates the European consolidation will cut costs. Program savings in Europe will be about 15 percent for the first two years, and then will decrease gradually.
The Europeans went out to bid first for a credit card, and chose Amex. Consolidation occurred relatively quickly, even though Europe accounts for the majority of the company's business, with Germany alone spending 60 percent of Siemens' worldwide volume of more than $500 million.
Still, the effort was a demanding one for Murphy. "In the last two years, I was here for about one and a half years," she said. "In South America, it is a whole different ballgame. If they had the same automation as in Europe, then it would probably be a piece of cake there too. But it will take us at least two years to figure out what we need to do there."
Last summer, as things in Europe wrapped up, Murphy began to focus on the 12 countries where Siemens has a presence in South America. She plans to go back in November to do a second round of data gathering before proposing a travel plan.
What has been distracting Murphy from South America also might be the solution to the difficult task of consolidating data there: her new effort to promote Siemens chip technology in the travel industry.
Smart cards are certainly nothing new for Murphy, who became acquainted with them in 1987 when working with Siemens Components. Siemens was the first company to make the chips so flat that they could be stuck into the piece of plastic. In 1992, Murphy developed a proposal to place the chip in Siemens' corporate card-a project that finally has started.
Meanwhile, many of Siemens' 20 operating companies have been testing or using the storage capability and security of the chip for other purposes, such as medical history and personnel identification.
"My task is to put all these pilot projects together and make one product," Murphy said. She envisions "a Siemens super ID, where you can identify yourself at any Siemens company, buy your travel directly from preferred suppliers, and the data is loaded on your card. You come back in the office and stick it in your computer and your expense report rolls out."
As the coordinator of the project to create this product, Murphy will work with cross-functional teams and a smart card group. The three councils that have formed have held their first meetings to advance the effort, which will get under way next March.
"I have to coordinate the integration of all the different technical procedures so they are applied to our travel program," Murphy said. "The person who does that needs knowledge of travel, and needs to have goals and a savings prognosis attached to them."
Her attention to this area, however, does not mean she will give up her travel purchasing responsibilities. "I'm not going to change jobs," Murphy said. "I will be predominantly concentrating on keeping up the office in the United States and finding a line on South America and finding all the parties to develop this chip product."
That's the approach she has taken toward travel all along in working with her colleagues on Siemens' eight-person travel council, and within her travel and fleet purchasing department, which includes an MIS person, a contract administrator and an assistant-a new assistant, in fact, because her former assistant has gone to work for Jürgen Hammerschmitt, who heads smart card efforts for Siemens' integrated circuits division.
Meanwhile, Murphy is tooling up with the new travel management technology. "This is the year we are trying to get a reservations system set-up from the computer onto the agency," she said. "Also, we have expense reporting software that the Siemens' Rolm subsidiary wrote, and we're trying to implement it through the whole company."
Next month, Siemens will install a server so that data can be provided for travelers and managers via its two-month-old intranet site, including the hotel directory, all travel purchasing agreements and the expense reporting software. "The most important part for us is a section on insurance and safety and travel advisories," Murphy said. "We will be using our intranet site very heavily, and we have some advertisers on it too. I hope that Siemens travelers get savvy with it and then I hope we can link other services as well. I think it will promote compliance.