While travel always has been personal, a mobile device
perhaps is even more so. An integrated element in everyday life, it probably is
the single most important item a traveler brings on a journey. As in many other
aspects of corporate travel these days, travel management professionals
considering how to bring mobile technologies into their programs must determine
how to account for traveler preferences, whether to embrace or discourage
B-to-C products and in what ways value and efficiency can be created.
Effectively managing the mobile channel is an increasingly
complex task, and the first question asked by travel buyers often is, "Should
we even bother?" Travelers may have strong attachments to a certain type
of device, certain consumer apps and certain processes that may or may not jibe
with organizational preferences.
For those companies that want to proactively build a mobile
travel program, the opportunities—and challenges—are numerous.
Getting Them
Many companies today no longer issue mobile phones to
traveling employees—though tablet devices may be another matter—opting instead
for the proverbial "bring your own device" approach.
"It wasn't that long ago that BlackBerrys were the
dominant devices in marketplace and all kinds of companies were buying them and
handing them to employees," said Matt DeWolf, Runzheimer International
director of new product development, during one of his firm's webinars in
November. "That was the norm. In just a few short years we have seen
tremendous growth in BYOD programs at companies throughout the world."
Now, according to Runzheimer, about half of all companies have a BYOD program
or some hybrid variation.
While security is a major concern, one that is heightened
when employees use personal items for business purposes, "we are the point
now where we are moving past security," said DeWolf, who noted the
availability of many tools that can help companies maintain security. "A
lot of companies are beginning to ask the question, 'what about user
experience?' It comes up because of the younger people entering the workplace.
The device is such a part of who they are, and they are very passionate about
it. If you have a company policy that is rigid and doesn't respect employee
privacy or give them choice, that is going to be a problem."
Yet, BYOD policies require other considerations beyond
security, including how to optimize mobile device usage and how to support
multiple device types and operating systems. "You really need to monitor
and educate your people in the field because stuff changes very quickly,"
DeWolf said.
Paying For Them
Of course, there's the matter of who pays for the devices as
well as the voice, text and data usage.
"Underreimbursing is just as bad as overreimbursing,"
DeWolf said. "If they are real road warriors and they are being
undercompensated, that can have a corrosive effect on your workforce." He
suggested that reimbursement policies—which must be "accurate, fair and
defensible"—should vary by employee level in the organization, job
function and possibly geography.
According to research from Business Travel News, 75 percent of respondent companies provide
employees with or reimburse for smartphones, and about the same number
reimburse travelers for cellular data plans.
Some companies still are trying to sort it all out. "The
mobile contract is something that landed on my desk and is a perfect example of
how a travel manager has to be more open-minded about the scope of
responsibilities," said Blackboard Inc. senior manager of corporate travel
and expense Valerie Fender. "It is nothing that I ever expected to be
doing."
The education software maker currently is revisiting its
entire mobile approach, since its longstanding contract provides "a
particular kind of device that is no longer the device that people want,"
Fender explained.
For voice, data and text usage, Blackboard has limits for
reimbursements, which are handled via a central bill. "If employees are
required to go outside their coverage area, on the roaming they are only
allowed to expense the cost of voice calls," Fender said. "And it's
supposed to be reasonable. We do not reimburse for data roaming because it's
completely out of control. It's expected that people disable data when they are
outside their calling area and leverage Wi-Fi opportunities. Of course we get
pushback on that, but a few days can be $900."
Using Them
Once travelers have mobile devices, the trick is determining
how they could and should use them. Are authorized apps and mobile websites the
only ones to be used for managing travel plans and expenses? To what extent
should organizations encourage or require the use of preferred supplier apps
and sites? Should travel departments work with IT and others to develop their
own apps?
The answers lie within the company culture, the structure of
the travel program and perhaps traveler demographics. In most cases, the goal,
as in corporate travel management in general, is to make employee travel safe,
easy, efficient and policy-compliant.
Perhaps those basics are enough for some, at least for now. "I
don't see [travel management professionals] asking about much beyond
information that will help them get comfortable with what their role should be
in advising their different travelers on mobile and get a good sense of what is
available and how it can benefit their travelers in terms of productivity and
their general satisfaction with the travel program," said April Bridgeman,
a BCD Travel executive recently appointed to lead the travel management company's
Advito consultancy. "A typical travel manager is not necessarily going to
have the same detailed feature and function conversation about a mobile app as
they might about an online booking tool, for example.
"The mobile channel itself is a huge enabler of other
things in a travel program beyond itinerary management," Bridgeman
continued. "It is a huge enabler of traveler engagement in the program and
the ability for travel managers to message the things that they think are
important in the program and that will influence the right decisions."
While the mobile channel clearly is thrusting onto travel
management a sea change, perceptions from travel managers on usage vary widely.
Some say penetration among their traveling populations thus far is minimal,
though in many cases it is impossible to really know.
At Navigant Consulting, which fields about 1,500 travelers, "between
3 percent and 5 percent actually are booking on mobile devices," according
to procurement and travel manager Greg Rackett, speaking on a recent webinar
conducted by The BTN Group. "How often are they used to just look around?
I have no idea."
When Blackboard's designated online booking tool made
available a mobile app, the company "was a phenomenal adopter and
everybody downloaded it," Fender said. "But it's been a few years,
and the feedback I get now is that it is just not very useful and just not cool
enough. You can't book on it. They focus on the limitations. I see people
relying on other consumer products that are available for assistance with their
travel. I am not sure how much effort should go into demanding stuff from our
vendors when it's just out there. There are options that they can find that they
like better."
That's why BCD Travel has taken a measured approach to
building its own mobile platform, expected later this year, according to
Bridgeman.
"If we are going to ask our travelers and our
corporations to embrace our mobile channel, it's because we have to give them
something they'll value that they can't get with 13 other apps today," she
said. "First and foremost, we need to understand the customer need and the
market need, not start throwing out technology for technology's sake and not
have a mobile app that only 10 percent of the people who download it are going
to come back and use it. We need to feel comfortable that, when we go to
market, our app is going to be rated very highly, will fill some gaps with
other apps in the marketplace and folks are going to want to use it."
Some travel managers say usage of existing mobile tools is
high among their travelers, if not yet for bookings then at least for itinerary
management and other functions. "They are not technically booking, but
about 95 percent of my travelers have the TMC app on their phone and 90 percent
actually use it to look at itineraries, figure out where they are going,
looking for a hotel close to them," according to Jennifer Zimmerman,
travel and procurement manager at workforce solutions firm ManpowerGroup,
speaking on a recent Global Business Travel Association webinar. "As the
TMC grows that, we'll start to use it even more for booking on the road and so
forth."
Similarly, once TMC Travel and Transport made available its
Dash mobile app, "it went like wildfire" among Werner Enterprises
travelers, according to Rhonda Porter, the company's manager of corporate
travel. "Our travelers heard about it and they were looking for a platform
to use while they were out there."
Manufacturing firm Meritor uses the Concur app for both
travel booking and expense, and global travel manager Jack Reynaert Jr. said "uptake
is indeed growing," aided by traveler training webinars. "Once they
do it, there's no going back. They find it hard to go back to the desktop tool."
Reynaert explained that the Concur app is one of the few he
has seen that allows organizations to enforce policy. "That's critical,"
he said. "If they couldn't do it on a mobile phone that would put them at
our preferred hotels, run it through our QC system with our dedicated agents,
etc., it would not play out as well."
Expense reporting appears to be a function for which
organizations see great potential for mobile solutions.
"The employees absolutely want to be able to approve
expense reports, submit expense reports on their mobile devices or iPads,"
said Blackboard's Fender. "We currently don't have a way for them to do
that. We are in the process of evaluating our expense tool and processes and
that is real high on the list of expectations. I don't think there is a lot of
concern about mobile apps for travel booking as much as there is for expense."
In the meantime, she is comfortable recommending to
travelers consumer apps that enable receipt scanning.
Said Reynaert, "The mobile app is why there is no
excuse for a late payment on the corporate credit card."
Enhancing Them
Moving forward, the sky seemingly is the limit for the
utility of the mobile channel within managed travel programs. "Under 10
percent of our total transactional activity is booked via mobile, so not a huge
number, albeit significantly growing," according to Orbitz for Business
vice president for global strategic accounts Mark Walton, also speaking on The
BTN Group's webinar. "Our responsibility as a technology company and as an
industry is to provide the opportunity to book travel from any mobile device. The
industry is getting there. Give them the opportunity and more than likely they
are going to use it."
Some travel managers also want more functionality related to
alerts on security issues and other disruptions, for their travelers and for
themselves.
Werner Enterprises' Porter also cited the possibility of
reaccommodation via mobile devices, which would replace the need to call into
the travel agency. "As technology increases, travelers probably would say
it would be really cool if they could change it themselves," she said. "Of
course, there are compliance issues that go with that. How much should they
spend to change a ticket? We should authorize that. There has to be some sort
of messaging system with it, but I think we are light years away from seeing
that on anyone's platform."
On Reynaert's wish list is a supplier rating and customer
satisfaction system tied to the managed travel program. "A hybrid where
you can have a more real-time experience evaluation, so you can understand when
travelers have issues with properties and get your own corporate feedback,
would be a good next step," he said. But he cautioned that apps "have
to be lean; the more stuff you add to it, the more cumbersome a mobile app
gets."
This report
originally appeared in the April 15, 2013, edition of Business Travel News.