Putting Palm Travel In Place

<B>Putting Palm Travel In Place</B>


<B>Name:</B> Vickie Smith

<B>Company:</B> Palm Inc.

<B>Headquarters:</B> Santa Clara, Calif.

<B>U.S. booked air volume:</B> $10 million to $12 million

<B>Number of frequent travelers:</B> 350

<B>Innovation:</B> Creating a managed travel program in 60 days


When Vickie Smith went to Palm Inc. at the end of June, she had 60 days to build a new program from the ground up and implement policy, equipment and supplier relationships. By the Sept. 1 deadline, Smith introduced an agency, onsite automation, net agreements with three preferred airlines and negotiated rates with four or five local hotels to accommodate the 75 percent of company travel that is inbound to Santa Clara.

The eight-year-old startup last year was spun off as a separate entity by parent company 3Com. The separation was official in March and the shared service agreements ended Aug. 31. "It gave us a very short lead time to put our own travel program in place," said Smith, who previously was manager of global meetings and events at 3Com.

Smith participated in the agency request for proposals process, although it was conducted prior to her official move to Palm. "Being a new company, we have a lot of people who are on the road frequently and a lot of recent college graduates, so we needed somebody to educate them and do the handholding," said Smith. "Navigant seemed to fit the mold. The name is new, but they are scaling up."

Navigant International was willing to support Palm's onsite at corporate headquarters for international and complex ticketing and its res center in Phoenix for simple domestic reservations. Smith also said that Navigant had enough of a Bay Area presence to provide floaters for the onsite. Palm first did the domestic RFP because it accounts for the majority of its volume, but the global company now is evaluating agencies in Europe and Asia/Pacific.

Smith has been doing a lot of change management and communication since Sept. 1, when Navigant replaced the 3Com incumbent Rosenbluth International. "The mindset at Palm was it was one more step to independence, but it also meant dealing with change," she said. Smith mostly heard travelers complain they wouldn't be dealing with the same agents as they had at 3Com, but said the greatest challenge was implementing automation. "You have to get IT involved, you have to get security involved and on and on," said Smith. "It's one thing if you've already got the programs in place, but to go in where there was nothing, we were working not only with internal departments, but dealing with 3Com site services for wiring and bringing on external systems linked to the intranet."

Smith used the 3Com policy as a starting point for the Palm policy and hired a consultant for benchmarking with 10 other companies with similar volume and office locations. Smith is continuing to make changes that reflect that information. For example, 3Com flew business class on international flights but Palm is evaluating that class of service since some of its peers don't permit that. However, no aspect of policy has been mandated: "We are in the Silicon Valley, mandate isn't a word we use."

Smith has given Navigant instructions to drive business to two or three preferred airlines. "We don't have the volume to spread so thin, so we have to monitor it very carefully," she said. Palm's preferred vendor agreements are net net and currently cover around 50 percent of its air volume. With 35 percent of the company's travel spend for international travel, Smith in 2001 will concentrate on negotiating with some international carriers to get better coverage in the Far East and Latin America.

Smith is finalizing an agreement with Sabre BTS. As part of its corporate initiative that software used by the company should tie in with the Palm device, Sabre will offer the BTS product in a downloadable version for the Palm. Smith joked that while a 60-to-90-day implementation period usually is required for online booking tools, she could cut that time down to 30 days. "I hope if I can get everything signed, we will do a beta in December with a few people to make sure it is linking properly," she said. "Then we will roll it out as a global booking tool, which is one thing they haven't done at 3Com." Smith anticipates that Palm will have a high adoption rate in part because many of its travelers already used BTS at 3Com and its people are very tech savvy.

Smith is working on implementing the American Express corporate card, which will provide global reporting. Without back data to determine past spend, Smith has not been able to target savings. In the coming year, she hopes to see savings of 15 percent to 20 percent.

Smith in 2001 will look at an automated expense reporting system, put together a global hotel program and draw on her meetings background at 3Com to consolidate meetings spend. Smith is uncertain whether she will have meeting managers in-house. "Navigant has a meetings division in Phoenix, but our meetings are usually within 60 miles of headquarters, so it probably would make sense to have people here.