Profiles In Travel Management: Toy Company Drives Up Adoption

Company: Mattel
Headquarters: El Segundo, Calif.
2005 Booked Air: $9 million

High online adoption rates usually are found in companies with a corporate culture of self-service or technologically savvy travelers, but not often in high-touch environments. Yet, such was the case for Mattel Inc., which in August achieved a 91 percent adoption rate for the Cliqbook online booking tool, despite the complicated needs of its travelers. The key, said Kay Steele, senior manager of travel services at the toy production company, was not the mandate senior management handed down earlier this year, but ensuring travelers were informed of the online booking process from the get-go.

Steele said high-touch services always have been part of Mattel's corporate culture, as 22 percent of the company's bookings are very involved international travel to Asia. Reining in the high-touch nature of Mattel's travel presented the biggest challenge in transitioning to a smaller onsite staff and self-booking tool.

In fact, Steele's first online implementation admittedly didn't go so well. "We went with our first pilot group in April 2005, with about 60 users from Mattel and Fisher-Price," she said. "We did this for about six months only to discover—primarily by going on the tool myself—that I didn't feel good about it. The tool was too cumbersome and not intuitive and I thought, 'This is not going to work.' "

At the Association of Corporate Travel Executives conference in Vancouver in the spring of 2005, Steele did more "due diligence" in researching a new online booking tool and returned to present Cliqbook to her company's chief financial officer. "We did another pilot group, and what was key in giving me confidence to help this transition occur was to learn the tool myself and experience firsthand what our travelers were experiencing," she said. "Knowing who our users are and the kind of questions they ask, I felt it was good and would work for us."

Steele said implementation was tricky because travelers' profiles needed to be put in order so first-time use of the tool was as simple as point and click. "That initial experience has to be positive or you can lose your audience," Steele said.

More important, however, was the training sessions she held of no more than eight people, mainly administrative assistants. Sessions began in October 2005 and lasted about three months. "We used the sessions not just to show the navigation of the tool, but also the psychological benefits," Steele said. "In essence, those training classes also were selling classes, reminding everyone that we weren't pioneers in this process, that most other companies had been using these tools for a few years and acknowledging that change is hard, but like anything else, once you make the effort, you look back and it becomes second nature. It was almost psychological selling on a one-on-one basis, and I know that may sound odd, but I really believe that is what helped us make a smooth transition."

In January of this year, the first month of implementation, Mattel achieved a 65 percent online adoption rate for eligible travel, which Steele defined as travel to Mexico and Canada in addition to the United States. At the same time, the company's CFO issued a mandate, which Steele said helped adoption immensely. By April 2006, Mattel's online adoption rate was 85 percent and by August rates were as high as 91 percent. She attributed the lag over those few months to getting straggler travelers on board.

"The mandate was one thing. That was a key to our success, but I wanted more than just to have good numbers. I wanted the users to be happy," she said. "I pretty much dedicated the first six months to doing desk calls to make sure people were comfortable. Within that 91 percent, I wanted 85 percent satisfaction."

Steele also credited the success of her program to her account manager at BCD Travel, Mattel's agency for the past six years, and to the advice of Nestlé's travel manager, Denise Adelman. "Even though we operate differently, there were a lot of similarities," Steele said of Adelman's program. "We discussed the ups and downs of rolling out a tool when one's culture is such that resistance is high. BCD did an amazing job of assisting us with the rollout. They're the ones we purchased the tool from and who did the implementation."

Though Mattel uses the tool only in the United States, Steele is considering rolling it out to Europe in 2007. When that time comes, Steele will have a homegrown example to measure her success against. "It's one thing to have a tool that people have to use," she said, "it's another thing to have a tool that people want to use."