<B>Wooten Joins Lockheed</B>
Lockheed Martin Corp. in January wooed Richard Wooten from his previous post as travel manager at Dallas-based Belo to a newly created position as director of corporate travel services at the Bethesda, Md., headquarters of the aerospace and defense giant.
Wooten is charged with consolidating the program and putting together a corporate travel department for Lockheed Martin, which, in the past, had a travel council consisting of one travel manager for each of its five divisions. Wooten in the next two months will put together an integrated staff of about 10 people, including an international representative to oversee global consolidation. Wooten said he still will draw upon the travel council concept. "There are a lot of viewpoints in certain markets we need to keep a pulse on," Wooten said.
Lockheed Martin--which boasts a U.S.-booked air spend of $280 million--renegotiated its airline contracts and converted to net-net fares shortly after Wooten came onboard. Wooten said it was challenging on behalf of a corporation that has a presence in just about every major market, where various carriers are dominant. Nonetheless, the company nailed down two-year upfront contracts with guaranteed fares for select city pairs. "Now, we only have to worry about meeting our commitments," Wooten said. That is, in addition to finalizing the travel team, working on further consolidation with its primary agency, SatoTravel, and deploying an online booking tool. Wooten also will focus on international opportunities, particularly in Europe, to negotiate air deals and capture international spend with Sato.
Wooten should be up to these challenging tasks: Two years ago, he began putting together from scratch Belo's first managed travel program, including negotiated deals. "It was a good learning experience to go from ground zero and have to get a program up and running," he said. Previously, he pioneered online booking with the rollout of ITN, the precursor of GetThere, as travel technology manager at Texas Instruments, where he carried out the strategy envisioned by former TI travel manager Colleen Guhin. Wooten said he is facing many of the same issues at Lockheed as he did at TI. "A lot of the things I learned in '96 still apply," he said. "Working to get the product out in front of people is still a challenge."
Meanwhile, following a decision made last June, Lockheed has begun rolling out GetThere across its business units and hopes to fully deploy the tool by the end of June in the United States, and begin deployment in the United Kingdom in the third quarter of this year.
Wooten is anticipating online adoption of 12 percent to 15 percent in the first year. He doubts that the company culture would permit a hard mandate, but is considering charging back the transaction fee to the traveler to make visible the price differential between online and traditional bookings. "Today, it is being done centrally," he said, "so travelers are not seeing the impact. What we want to do is begin charging to individual bills. It puts a lot more focus and attention on savings opportunities.