Tim Bone, director of global travel, meetings and events at San Francisco-based Gap Inc., in the past 16 months has engineered a near-total makeover of the publicly traded company's travel program, which comprises operations in Asia, Europe, the Middle East and the Americas.
Since joining Gap in October 2000, Bone has created a new travel policy, secured the services of a travel management company, implemented online booking, globalized the corporate travel program and centralized the meeting operations of the company's three retail divisions: Gap, Old Navy and Banana Republic. He credited his success, in large part, to the exceptional support he enjoys from senior management and the high level of service he receives from his travel management company, American Express.
"The new program turned around the company's management of its travel and entertainment spending," Bone said, and generated substantial savings.
An important feature of Bone's realignment of Gap Inc.'s operations was his inclusion of top brass in the planning and rollout of the new program. "I present detailed financial and organizational information every quarter to the Gap Inc. executive committee," Bone said. He meets every week with his supervisor, vice president of corporate administration Diane Agate, to discuss his goals for the travel program and his progress toward those goals. "It keeps the top management apprised," Bone said. "They're never blindsided by anything I do and they know what policy is."
Bone said effective communication with rank and file employees and middle managers also was key to quick adoption to policy changes. "In rolling out the new travel program, I had seminars throughout the company for two weeks," he said. The seminars gave Gap employees and managers an overview of the travel department's purpose and its reengineered policies. Bone said it was especially important to emphasize "how the travel department contributes to the bottom-line share price."
"We explained our new preferred supplier programs and how we're going to mandate tougher guidelines and policies," he said. The key motivator for the changes in policy was cost savings. "We're very conscientious in terms of what we spend because of the current state of the economy," he said. "Everyone involved is making sure that every penny that could be made, saved or earned is taken care of. There is no abuse here."
Kathy Brennan, American Express' San Francisco-based director of operations for premium customers and Bone's chief Amex contact, said, "Bringing Tim Bone aboard was the smartest thing Gap ever did." Brennan discusses ongoing development of the Gap program with Bone at least three times a week. She said Bone particularly was effective in his transition from a rent-a-plate operation to an Amex servicing configuration. "By moving his base of support to a call center in Memphis and cutting the number of people servicing his account from 35 to 17, Tim has saved the Gap substantial travel management costs."
American Express' technology also helps Bone to stay on top of what his travelers are doing. "I have Portfolio Web, which provides me with reports detailing all of our travelers' bookings, including those who book outside of policy. Because I have all that information in front of me, I can guide travelers into compliance."
Gap's intranet also was an effective tool for driving compliance, Bone said. "We've got a great program on the Web and that helped to get the info out on how the program works." The travel management intranet site has information on preferred hotels and airlines, booking through Amex and using GetThere, Gap's online booking engine. Bone is making a push to promote the use of GetThere to save on transaction costs. Although online booking at Gap has climbed to 5 percent since it was rolled out last October, Bone is hoping for an "aggressive 15 percent for the end of the year," driven, in part, by an intranet-based educational campaign.
Although Bone had positive experiences with American Express as his domestic agency, he still solicited bids from other companies for Gap's overseas management needs. While working on a request for proposal for global travel management in London, Bone said he would make his selection for a global travel provider in April. "Whoever takes over my business in Europe will take over our Asia/Pacific and Middle East business as well," he said.
Before selecting an international global travel management company, Bone implemented a temporary global travel policy "that has uniform language in terms of preferred suppliers, per diem expenses and the like," he said.
Although Bone estimated that his goal of a "seamless, online and global" travel management program wouldn't be reached for another four years, he said, "In the past year-and-a-half, I've implemented the right policy. I'm on the way."