As luxury leather goods company Coach Inc. grew to 800
locations in North America and Asia, its executives realized the company needed
to quickly develop a global travel program encompassing operations in 20
countries and ensuring travelers on company trips are "as comfortable as
possible," said Coach director of global travel Kim Kaye.
To do so, Coach about two years ago hired Kaye to manage the
company's annual $40 million travel and expense spending, including $18 million
worth of air travel. Kaye joined Coach from healthcare company Baxter
International, where she was senior manager for global travel.
At the time, Coach's travel program was managed "locally
and somewhat autonomously," Kaye said. Suppliers were sourced either by
country or by business unit, which could include several countries. The company
also didn't have globally consolidated or comprehensive travel data.
Individual markets "implemented solutions based on
local requirements, and it was a bit fragmented," Kaye said. "As our
volume continued to grow, Coach recognized there was a need to work together to
better leverage our spend and find some additional opportunities."
Kaye began the process by interviewing Coach executives
around the world to get a sense of which travel procedures worked, which didn't
and the procedures that each leader wanted the company to implement—a sort of
wish list. Those managers suggested such goals as a single governing T&E
policy with consistent oversight and review capabilities, the ability to
quickly and efficiently handle change, the availability of consolidated data
and the possibility of savings.
Those suggestions served as a framework for a global program
and platforms. Kaye then organized a committee of representatives from the
finance, procurement, shared services, operations, human resources and
construction teams, as well as frequent flyers and travel arrangers.
"[The committee] was really instrumental to the success
of the program and being able to enlist all individuals to provide input,"
Kaye said.
First on the to-do list was implementation of a global hotel
program. Coach identified properties in each of the major cities where
employees wanted to stay and where the company could negotiate the best rates.
Next, Coach issued a request for proposals for a global
travel management company. The company sought a TMC that had similar
values—customer satisfaction, integrity, innovation and success through
collaboration. It selected BCD Travel in the fourth quarter of 2012.
"We chose BCD because their values similarly aligned
with Coach's and because it could grow with us, and it had the technology
capabilities we needed, such as data consolidation, as well as global
capabilities," Kaye said.
[PROFILE_1]By February 2013, Coach nearly had completed the global
implementation. Representing the last 5 percent of its volume, Japan is
scheduled to be implemented in August.
Kaye said Coach previously had no global safety and security
program, but through BCD Travel it now can track all travelers and contact them
in emergencies by text, email or phone.
Coach has two preferred payment suppliers but plans to
consolidate to one. "We did a review with our team on potential options,
and now we're in the process of finalizing a global [payment] RFP," Kaye
said. Coach hasn't had a payment system in place in Asia; Kaye said it remains
common for travelers there to pay for airfares and other expenses by invoices.
For expense management, Coach currently is rolling out a
single supplier globally. The company was in the process of implementing a
different system for some countries in Asia than the one it used in North
America, but after a review it was decided instead to deploy a single solution.
"We were able to build a business case as to why we
needed a global platform in place," Kaye said. That business case included
consistency and efficiency worldwide, to be made possible by a single governance
policy.
To make that happen, Kaye simultaneously worked closely with
the travel committee to create a more globally consistent travel policy. While
there were some similarities among the separate pre-existing policies, there
also were many differences.
"We had to work together to identify how we could come
to a common ground," she said. "From there, I took that policy,
consolidated it, built in some industry trends and best practices, then I went
through the approval process with leadership and built a training program for
all of T&E."
Some new stipulations that previously weren't addressed in
Coach's travel policy centered around airlines' unbundled fee structures,
including reimbursement for fees for checked bags, certain seat assignments and
other ancillary services.
"For hotels, we made sure we incorporated as many
amenities as we could and looked at negotiating longer-term stays," Kaye
said.
Since rolling out the new T&E policy in January 2013,
Kaye said usage of preferred airlines rose from "very low" levels to
percentages in the upper 70s. Compliance to preferred hotel policies increased
to percentages in the upper 80s from about 55 percent, while online utilization
also rose by 10 percentage points.
"I expected that we probably would've taken a bit
longer to build it, but the appetite was strong," Kaye said. "As we
started to go through the process, there was some strong interest to pick up
the pace, so we decided to move things along more quickly."
This report
originally appeared in the August 2013 edition of Travel Procurement.