Profiles InTravel Management: Revving Up a Travel Program
Revving Up a Travel Program
Company: Applera Corp.
Headquarters: Norwalk, Conn.
2004 U.S. booked air volume: $8 million
2004 worldwide air volume: $12 million
When senior travel manager Suzen Moye joined life sciences company Applera Corp. in December 2002, she faced the task of bringing a lightly managed, decentralized, procurement-led travel program from zero to 60 in under a year. Heavily mandated and highly centralized, Applera Corp. maintains policy compliance levels in the 90 percent range and drives significant online adoption when, three years ago, no online booking tool was even in place.
"Prior to my coming aboard, there was one person who handled fleet, real estate, travel, a number of areas. He was in purchasing and then the two departments evolved: travel management and procurement. They wanted someone to dedicate 100 percent of their time to travel," said Moye, who, along with the senior manager of procurement, reports into the finance department. Moye assessed and retained the services of travel management company American Express, implemented GetThere as the company's online booking tool and changed corporate card providers.
"The other piece was making sure we had an expense reporting system that was more up to date. Previously, we had a paper system. In putting in the online tool and the expense reporting system, we found we had the option of creating rules and allowing or disallowing certain people to do certain things. That's where we really gained compliance," she said. "Anything that we wanted to drive, we drove by putting different rules into our systems."
By November 2003, Moye had established a fully integrated travel program and, with all the nuts and bolts in place, reemphasizing the importance of policy, the guidelines of which were already in place at Applera, and effectively training employees became paramount, said Moye. By analyzing traveler behavior, she was able to identify seven frequently traveled citypairs and mandate that those itineraries be booked online. "You cannot book through the traditional office on those. If you call them, they tell you to go online. If you have a problem, they'll go online with you the first time, then refer you to the site administrator. Once they do it once or twice, they're usually on their own." she said. "That has really helped to improve adoption."
A strongly suggested non-reimbursement policy helps keep rogue booking to a minimum, Moye said. Prior to Applera's travel overhaul, employees would receive a "slap on the wrist" for noncompliant behavior. "Now, if you don't book the way we say, you're just not going to be reimbursed. There have been a handful of people that were used as examples and people have learned. They don't even attempt to do that now," said Moye. "We'll get calls sometimes: 'I need to book something and I don't want to be out of policy, so please help me.' We never got those calls before."
Today, Applera has roughly 92 percent policy compliance and over 50 percent online adoption among 1,500 total travelers, Moye said. If adjusted to discount those who are policy-exempt, she said, adoption would rise into the 90 percent range. "Our senior management is pretty much exempt because their travel is more complex and demanding. That would bring us to maybe 95 percent, and then 40 percent of our travelers are non-employees, so they can't book online. We're really just about maxed out at where we can get through online adoption," she said.
Online booking of such non-employee travelers as consultants, interview candidates and guests long has been a roadblock to achieving optimal adoption for many travel managers whose companies require travelers have a corporate card to be recognized by the online booking tool. "That's why I'm looking for a work-around where we provide access to consultants who work with us on a regular basis by putting in maybe a ghost card number or something like that," said Moye. "We're working on that with American Express and GetThere. It's the next stage of it. The technology continues to evolve."
By the end of fiscal year 2006, Moye hopes to make a dent in developing a global travel management program. "The program is only in the United States. Now, we're moving it to Canada, then we want to take it globally," she said. "The Canadian piece of expense management should be up by July."