Profiles In Travel Management: Policy, Rearden Tool Help Upgrade Travel Program

ConAgra Foods has rolled out a new global travel policy and online travel procurement platform that has driven up adoption levels, increased preferred supplier usage for leverage in future negotiations and enabled the company to begin to corral meetings and events expenditures and procure ancillary travel services online.

The company deployed the new travel policy and Rearden Commerce's Personal Assistant online travel procurement platform simultaneously as part of a mission to "simplify" processes and practices, said ConAgra procurement category manager Amanda Jackson, who manages travel contracts, the online booking program and the policy.

Since July 2007, the Omaha, Neb.-based company with $22 million in annual U.S. booked air volume has harvested a projected annual savings of $3.5 million through lower average airfares, a 3 percent increase in preferred air carrier use—giving its top airline an additional 4 percent share of its business—a 4 percent increase in the use of nonrefundable tickets and a 50 percent increase in the number of car rental bookings made online.

Backed by a senior management endorsement and a strategic communications and training program, the company was able to reach an 81 percent adoption level for air bookings in 30 days on eligible transactions—bookings with less than three destinations—surpassing its goal of reaching a 75 percent online adoption rate within 90 days.

ConAgra previously used multiple policies and had an 11 percent adoption rate with its incumbent online booking tool, said Jackson, who joined the company in October 2006.

ConAgra also has seen dramatic increases in preferred travel vendor use. The corporation implemented its first national hotel program and increased preferred hotel compliance from 30 percent to 60 percent in the first 30 days of rolling out the online platform.

"Through our online booking tool, all of the preferred hotels are marked as such so they can quickly see the preferred relationship without going outside the tool," Jackson said.

The travel policy reinforced the need to book through the appropriate channels—online or through Omaha, Neb.-based travel management company Travel and Transport. "We wanted to pull together all of our data and spend so we could leverage that in future negotiations," Jackson said. "The main reason we did this was that we wanted to go back to one of our must-dos as a company and nourish our people by focusing on the safety of our travelers. In order to know where our people are traveling, we wanted them to book through the appropriate channel so we could get the reporting on the back end."

Jackson said the backing of senior management was instrumental to success. Con-Agra's executive vice president of human resources and CFO endorsed the initial communications program, which ran from April through July 2007. Jackson collaborated with the corporate communications department to develop a strategy to educate employees and departments who had a history of noncompliance with the travel program.

The communications program was complemented with weekly training sessions for the first two months, onsite demonstrations with Rearden staff and refresher sessions. According to Jackson, half of ConAgra's 6,000 travelers underwent training before rollout. Before companywide release, Jackson tested the online program with 300 pilot users.

—Seth Harris