Goodman Networks Lays Foundation For A Managed Travel Program

In January 2011, Karen Hatch began her role as corporate travel manager at Goodman Networks. Within six months, she had led the bid, selection and implementation of a new travel management services provider, overseen the rollout of an automated expense reporting system and linked that system to a new booking tool. Along the way, she revised travel policies and streamlined T&E payment processes—quickly laying the foundation for the telecommunications services firm's first chainwide hotel deals and direct airline agreements. She also managed to take on fleet management and meetings, all while keeping sight of traveler stresses stemming from new policies, a new travel agency and unfamiliar new tools.

While many employees on their first day at a job are busy setting up email, locating nearby bathrooms and maybe glancing at the employee handbook, Hatch dug in to establishing the fundamentals of a managed travel procurement program. There already was motion in that direction; the company had selected the IBM GERS expense system to replace an Oracle tool. On day one, Hatch was tasked with leading the expense transition team.

It was the beginning of her frenzied start at Goodman. "The next day kicked off the Concur Travel implementation," Hatch said, referring to the tool selected to replace an earlier Rearden Commerce system.

The goal to establish an end-to-end booking and expense system was met within months, but that didn't mean it was easy. Among other unforeseen challenges, it became clear to Hatch that the company had outgrown its local travel agency.

Speed-Dating Agencies  

That meant another time-sensitive task on an already crowded schedule.

"We had only 10 to 15 days to go through that process" of securing a long-term agency deal, Hatch said. She needed to "speed date" with travel management companies.

With the assistance of Management Alternatives consultant Will Tate, Hatch and her team in April 2011 found Goodman's mate in Adelman Travel. The TMC was installed in just over a month.

Accomplishing that meant the company could move forward on the booking and expense solutions. Those, along with new policies, went live in June 2011. A year later, Hatch has transformed a lightly managed travel program into a nicely maturing one.

Changing Policy, And Behavior 

It was more than just tools and partners that Hatch sought to establish at Goodman. There also was the matter of policy.

Among other changes, Hatch saw a need to do away with the company's per-diem program by putting plastic in the hands of more travelers. That meant enhanced tracking and accountability.

"We had a whole department of field technicians on per diem," she explained. "They were getting a car per diem, a meal per diem and a hotel per diem." Fearing the per-diem system was ripe for abuse, Hatch rapidly expanded T&E cards in force, nearly doubling the number of American Express cardholders to more than 900.

"We went to actual expenses, given that they now had their own American Express card and it was no longer coming out of their pocket," she said. "Now, we'd be paying based on actual expenses for hotel, and the meal allowance was set at $30 a day across the board, no matter what city. We hard-stopped that in the expense reporting tool, and that was huge." Soon, those changes reduced on-the-ground travel expenses, 100 percent of which are audited to ensure compliance.

As for air travel policies, Hatch streamlined a "complex" pre-trip approval process. "It was based on the value of the ticket: $100 to $500 went to one manager [for approval]; $500 to $750 went to two managers; $750 to $1,100 went to three; and over $1,100 went to four," she said. "We did this analysis of how many tickets were being rejected, and it was like 0.02 percent. Using that data, we completely simplified our process for approval." Under the new policy, only bookings of more than $1,100 require a second level of management approval.

All told, Hatch simplified the company's 48-page policy document to 30 pages. But refining it further has been a challenge, considering Goodman has separate policies for separate employee groups.

Still, Goodman's new expense and booking systems were ideal tools to teach policy. "That's the key in implementing your online booking tool and having that whole end-to-end solution. You really need to be consistent in how you program both tools to work together," Hatch said. "Each can reinforce the other."

[PROFILE_1]Building A Hotel Program 

When Hatch joined Goodman Networks, the bulk of the hotel program was outsourced to CLC Lodging. While the company had negotiated agreements with a handful of properties near headquarters, "there were no negotiated chain [deals]," she said.

Hatch harnessed Goodman's coming-of-age travel program to bring the hotel component in-house and secure chainwide deals. To do so, she moved the company off CLC and required travelers to make hotel bookings directly through preferred channels. "Getting them to adopt a new process was quite the challenge," she said. "They previously picked up the phone and called. We had to educate them on how Adelman operates versus CLC."

She noted that Goodman previously used "a direct bill for hotel through CLC, and then we moved to AirPlus for our hotel direct bill for those folks who don't have corporate cards."

Armed with booking data and standing alongside a new agency partner, Hatch saw opportunities to leverage hotel spend with key suppliers. "We launched chainwide agreements with the top vendors we were using, which were Choice and Best Western," she said. "We added La Quinta this year to our chainwide agreements."

Hatch also optimized spending in other categories, some outside the traditional travel buyer's portfolio. For example, last year she worked to launch a fleet program of more than 300 trucks. "We are seeing some savings there and have been able to measure our ROI," Hatch said. While that meant a decline in volume for Goodman's preferred rental car firm, Avis Budget, she added that "we are still very much attached to them."

Hatch also is transitioning her airline program toward direct deals with major carriers. She noted a front-end discount program with United Airlines and a relationship with Southwest Airlines. The company also continues to use small business programs offered by other carriers.

[PULL_1]Managing Traveler Satisfaction 

Given all the sweeping transitions, Hatch sought to ease the burden of change on Goodman's travelers through communications and outreach. "There were so many changes thrown at them at once, so it was important that we took the time to be personal with each one of them and address each one of their concerns individually and personally, just to educate them on what we're doing and why," she said.

Calling herself an "over-communicator," Hatch cited monthly webinars and required training for new employees. "I'm doing executive, high-level quarterly reports and, for managers, monthly reports," she added. "I have ongoing emails about expenses, and we also just launched Yammer," an enterprise social networking system.

Despite all the change, or perhaps because of it, travelers in a recent satisfaction survey showed "dramatic improvements with both the agency and the online satisfaction ratios," Hatch said. "The travel team just scored very highly and got some great remarks." According to that survey, 96 percent of travelers were "satisfied" or "very satisfied" with the travel agency and 91 percent expressed the same for the online booking tool.

Hatch now is further refining policies and optimizing travel spending. She recently began developing a new meetings policy. "We've already started communications that all meetings should go through our travel team because Adelman can help us with the RFP and finding a location," she said. "We now have preferred hotel vendors to get us the space that we need and get better deals."

Meanwhile, Hatch is working to better manage one-way tickets booked by Goodman travelers, many of whom often travel on open-ended work assignments. She also is in the final phase of a corporate card RFP ahead of a planned shift from a central-bill structure to a setup in which individuals pay for air bookings.

This report originally appeared in the August 2012 issue of Travel Procurement.