Pfizer VP Puts Value On Travel Service

<H1> Pfizer VP Puts Value On Travel Service</H1>For Paul del Balso, Pfizer Inc. vice president of corporate sevices and technology, heavy involvement with travel management decisions has become the norm. With globalization, agency renegotiation and the advance of travel automation on the horizon, that involvement only looks to increase. The pharmaceutical company senior executive recently spoke with BTN editor-in-chief David Meyer about his travel experiences and expectations.

BTN: Are there particular productivity tools or services that you are now looking to spend money on that you might not have in the past?

del Balso: We're involved in a significant effort to automate the T&E process within the company.

BTN: How are you determining the value of T&E automation products as they become available?

del Balso: We have a cross-functional team of travel, IS, users and finance people. We have looked at it from a best-practices point of view and identified the characteristics that we want to have in the automated travel system. Now we're going out and looking at what software vendors provide.

BTN: When you invest in new technology, there is a danger that as a pioneer you could take an arrow in the chest.

del Balso: We do not want to be the pioneers. It's not enough of a competitive advantage for us to want to create the tools. We'd like to take advantage of somebody else's suffering.

BTN: So such an acquisition is actually a year or so away?

del Balso: Yes, but in the interim we hope to improve some of the practices within the company to start moving in that direction, things like direct deposit for reimbursement of employees. We've already streamlined the approval process. We're looking at a number of interim measures.

BTN: How much time do you spend with the CEO, the CFO and others in the executive suite talking about travel?

del Balso: We have a body called the Corporate Management Committee, and they've asked us to report back to them on a quarterly basis on the status of our travel program regarding both savings and quality metrics. One of the keys to our savings is moving market share for our partner airlines-United, Delta and Continental-so one of our metrics is how much we've succeeded. The chairman has asked to be briefed on what he can do to help continue moving market share among employees who have perhaps been less than enthusiastic about jumping on board.

BTN: So is his role in enforcing compliance through directives, or are there other processes that he gets involved with?

del Balso: It's both through issuing a directive to the top managers in the company and through moral suasion in terms of talking to the operating divisions and looking for opportunities to drop into the conversation how much he appreciates the savings and their efforts to accomplish them. So it's more by reinforcing the positives than by emphasizing the negatives.

BTN: Does the CFO have a clear feel for travel management?

del Balso: Very much so. He was the original guiding force behind our undertaking this, and provided the initial direction and scope.

BTN: Can you tell me a little bit about how that transpired?

del Balso: When he took over as the vice president of finance and was looking for opportunities to streamline our operations, travel was high on the list. At that time we didn't have an in-house travel manager; Phil Dunphy hadn't been brought on yet. We had something like 16 or 18 internal travel agencies that we used just within this building. The travel policies were lax and poorly enforced, so he created a travel council with representatives from all of the major business units. Out of that effort came a new set of travel policies, the decision to create a travel management function within the company, the decision to look to identify a corporate travel provider and use that leverage to negotiate with some carriers. He was behind that whole corporate services effort.

BTN: How are you involved with the travel council today?

del Balso: Only indirectly through Phil.

BTN: So Phil in effect is the chair of the council, which actually creates the travel policy?

del Balso: Yes.

BTN: How long have you been involved with managing travel?

del Balso: Since we put together the travel program here at Pfizer about two and a half years ago.

BTN: Has your involvement been steady during that time, or increasing?

del Balso: My involvement has been pretty heavy over the whole period of time, but it has had its peaks and valleys. At the time that we established the program, the level of involvement was very intense as we went back and revisited all of our travel policies, in light of our desire to better control costs as well as make sure that we provided employees with a reasonable travel experience. Then with the recent changes in airline ticketing, to try to carve out 10 percent of the distribution costs we again got much more involved. We look at travel as being a corporate shared service. The initiative started in the U.S. and is now moving to the international front.

BTN: So you have responsibility for travel globally as well as domestically?

del Balso: I have oversight for global travel and direct responsibility for domestic travel.

BTN: Who do you liaison with for international travel functions?

del Balso: There are travel managers in each country. Phil provides the liaison. He and I meet him on an as-needed basis, but a week never goes by that I don't talk to him at least once or twice. Our focus is on two things: controlling costs and ensuring the level of quality. For our employees who travel, which at the best of times is an arduous experience, we want to make sure that service is as flawless as possible.

BTN: So your focus is on productivity, not just savings.

del Balso: Yes.

BTN: How do you get involved in setting policy?

del Balso: In both providing input to the council and reviewing and providing guidance to what they propose.

BTN: What's the most effective way to enforce travel policy?

del Balso: Create specific metrics by area and then back that up with targeted education programs so that people understand what's behind the policy and what benefits accrue to the company. There are always a few people who are recalcitrant. Most people just don't understand that it's important to us to move market share toward our partner airlines to continue to get the significant discounts we seek. So that while every trip may not seem important to them, it is to us.

BTN: With the commission cap and the need to renegotiate the agency deal, have you been even more involved with travel management in the preceding year?

del Balso: Yes. Certainly the commission cap created quite a bit of involvement and excitement. We're just beginning the process to renegotiate. That's going to take quite a bit of time, I imagine.

BTN: With all these question marks in the air about technology and the nature of the agency relationship, it doesn't appear that your involvement with travel management is going to decrease soon.

del Balso: No, I don't expect it will. The level of travel that we do and the costs of travel are never going down. On the international side, the price of travel in some of the key cities is increasing rapidly in dollar terms, and we need to manage that. And as we bring international on board this year, I think the effort to coordinate and control all of our global activities will take a significant amount of effort. We're starting to get data from the international locations and we're looking at opportunities to bundle more. I think this year, in some key markets, we'll start to see benefits from our efforts in the North Atlantic, particularly in the United Kingdom.

BTN: Do you see video and teleconferencing as alternatives to travel?

del Balso: As complements more than alternatives.

BTN: What is the usage level of those tools at this point?

del Balso: In terms of hours, I don't know, but in terms of the number of facilities for videoconferencing we went from 35 last year to 61 to date, and it's still growing rapidly. It's supplementing and enriching telephone conversations and written reports rather than having a big impact on most business trips. There are some that are getting replaced, such as meetings in which 20 people come and sit in one room, but the manager who is going out to visit his locations-that doesn't go away.