Los Angeles – The BTN Group's 2014 Travel Manager of the Year Steven Mandelbaum and those it named 2014 Best Practitioners—Sally Abella, Rita Visser and Christopher Wall—in late July participated in a roundtable discussion conducted here by BTN's Chris Davis and David Meyer. The four honorees reflected on how they implemented their best practices and lessons learned. Edited excerpts follow.
BTN: What type of internal approval did you need to get to go forward with your initiatives, and what sort of data did you use to make your case?
Christopher Wall: We took an approach that was based on our operational history: the previous several years of our strategic meetings management initiative and where we had gotten to versus where we had hoped to get to. We hadn't reached that goal. We hadn't reached that level of implementation on a global basis that we were looking for. That really was key in the approach that we took of wanting to change. The stakeholders who we went back to were the businesses, other leaders within procurement, health care compliance, legal and the internal audit [departments] to come to agreement as to the approach. They are very much on board, and on a quarterly basis there is a review to the top leadership of the organizations as to our progress on a global basis.
BTN: Was everybody on the same page from the start or was there a bit of wrangling?
Wall: Generally speaking, I think everyone understood that yes, there's a need to get there. I think where you see differences in any large company is where you're focused on driving revenue and containing costs. It can be sometimes challenging to take those two factors and pull them together. That's where this whole global approach provides us the ability to do that.
Steven Mandelbaum: We have a traveler steering committee, which is made up of senior executives from our top traveling groups. We took it to them. We take most of our initiatives to them to see what the reaction is. We want to make sure this is something that will work across the board and we're not missing some backlash or we're not missing a detail. Occasionally the process backfires. It doesn't work perfectly. It just seemed like a very logical thing to do. We've had other way more controversial topics.
BTN: You don't need the CEO to sign off?
Mandelbaum: Generally not, particularly on things that are consensus-driven. This seemed like a no-brainer. We want people to be compliantly traveling. If we've got policy, we ought to be rewarding that and we ought to not be rewarding the other side.
Rita Visser: I didn't need any. Delta did. It's good when they have to ask for approval and I don't.
BTN: Sally, when you went to the chairman, what sort of evidence were you bringing? What sort of numbers did you have to state your case?
Sally Abella: We talked about the example of a one-day trip from Los Angeles to New York. I presented it to my boss, who is the [chief human resources officer] at Harman. He said, “We're having an executive committee meeting next week, and I'm going to get you on the agenda. Let's do it by videoconference.” I did my presentation to the executive committee and explained to them how many room nights we had at our top five campuses and the fact that we want that money to be in front of the customer or being used for other things. We know that internal meetings are important, but we also thought we could cut down internal meetings by utilizing videoconference facilities that we've already paid for that aren't being used. It was a no-brainer.
Mandelbaum: Sheer [videoconference] utilization isn't necessarily the metric you're most looking at here, right? It's the hotel rooms in the top six cities?
Abella: Yes. Our IT department knew they had invested all this money in this video equipment, and it wasn't being used.
Mandelbaum: That is not uncommon. Videoconferences are very popular to put in, but using them, less so.
BTN: Was there anyone who influenced you—a consultant, adviser or someone else you saw doing work in this area who helped you to develop your concept?
Wall: Internally, the whole notion of a global approach is one that we use and how we run our business. I'd heard that concept within J&J. It makes lots of sense. Looking at our own business and how we provide services in trying to roll this out made all the sense in the world. It was really helpful to see that.
I see lots of great things that are happening, like with the folks [at this roundtable], but also people I work with who are competitors in the sharing groups that we all join. You always get lots of things from those to apply to your program, and that is something I continually look to do. There are lots of people doing lots of great things in this space, and it's going to continue to move and improve.
BTN: Did you bring in other external or internal sources to help shape the strategic direction?
Wall: Absolutely. Internally, we have regional leads around the globe. They're involved. Our whole leadership team was involved in that. Our key agencies provided us with input as well to figure out the solution.
Abella: It's local by region, right? For the Asia/Pacific region, for example, do they all have one policy and one process, or is it by country?
Wall: We have a global policy. That's the framework. There are certain aspects of that framework that everyone is going to follow. When it comes to then a regional approach, there are differences in how the meetings business works in Asia/Pac versus EMEA versus Latin America.
BTN: Rita, obviously there wasn't a lot of precedent for what you did. Did the idea come from conversations with other people or it was just a brainstorm?
Visser: What's really funny about it is when ancillary [airlines fees first were implemented], there was an uproar. We also get together in peer groups and have conversations and participate in conferences like this, and we've got a group of people now that just get on a phone call once every three months and say, "What are you working on?"
In that peer group of people, they're like, "Oh we're having the conversation. We're having the conversation." Finally, I said, "Guys. This isn't rocket science. We have to have a strong conversation, and we have to go in with a plan for them. [The airlines] obviously aren't going to figure this out on their own."
One of my managers at the time said, "Do we have any idea on what this impact is going to be to us?" We said, "We're calculating some numbers." He was only thinking about it from the cost standpoint. I said, "We also have to try to find a way that we can get credit for it." He said, "What's the solution there?" I told him, "I'm not a math wizard, but it's as easy as this divided by this will get you something."
He looked at me and said, "Well, that's something to start with." Then I started to have some of those conversations in those peer groups. They said, "Yeah, it's something to start with because we don't have anything right now." Then I said, "Okay I'll forge ahead." I just wanted to make sure there wasn't somebody that said, "Rita, that was absolutely stupid." It really was too easy for it to even make that much sense.
I wanted to float it by some people and say, "What am I missing here?" Then after the fact, it's that relationship thing with the airlines. They had to trust that the information I was giving them and vice versa.
Mandelbaum: It was a simple formula, right?
Visser: Correct. I just used easy math, and it's had positive impacts for Oracle because we're performing on contracts.
Abella: I think it's a great idea. Why not jump on it?
Visser: The airlines have always said, "Yes, we understand that you want credit for that." We just didn't have a way to formalize it, and they didn't have a way to rationalize it.
Mandelbaum: Since it took them so long, you had an artful solution. I think timing was everything in this case.
Visser: We had to have the information. They didn't want to take for granted or at face value my numbers. I didn't want to take it at face value what their numbers were. We had some conversations.
BTN: Sally, certainly other people have dealt with videoconferencing before. Have you heard of someone else following a path like this? Were you inspired by somebody else's action?
Abella: When our IT group approached me, it was two or three weeks before Sabre had a Virtual Meeting booth that they were displaying at GBTA. We used GetThere. Sabre was really very influential in helping me get this project off the ground.
BTN: Do you benchmark at all with any sort of benchmarking group?
Abella: No.
Mandelbaum: We traditionally have not done a lot of that. It's hard because it's so circumstantial. Ticket prices are when you buy it, and we like benchmarks as a way to control costs, but we don't use it really for any comparison.
BTN: As far as your best practice is concerned, did you look at others? Were you influenced by other buyers?
Mandelbaum: No, I'm influenced by the airlines. They have some of the best loyalty programs around, and if the airlines ever wondered if these programs work, I can assure them that they do. We said, "Well, if it works for them, it would work for us." That's sort of the influence.
BTN: What advice would you give those looking to follow in your footsteps in terms of your initiatives?
Wall: I think it becomes real important to get the full view of stakeholders: what's needed, what the issues are. You really need to take a very focused, dedicated, long-term approach. It's not going to be a short-term win. It takes some level of perseverance in order to get there. Along that way, continued communication at multiple levels.
Having a very good communications program that targets senior levels on down to those who are actually doing a lot of the work that all of us get involved with, which are the administrative assistants supporting our businesses. They play a key and important role. You really have to understand the needs of all those different stakeholders. It's not just the senior executive who owns the budget. It's really all the stakeholders who are impacted or can affect or are affected by what you're doing.
Visser: Go for it. Just ask the question. Start the conversation. The groundwork has been laid.
Abella: My advice is that you reach out to the stakeholders. Make sure that you have the right team behind you because literally I was helping our IT group. They came to me for assistance. They wanted the help, and I agreed to help them. It just makes you think about being one company. We're all in this together. And of course get executive buy-in. What was better than getting a message from your chairman out to the Harman community? I couldn't have asked for something better than that.
Mandelbaum: Don't accept status quo. Don't be afraid to do things that you think make sense and that are logical. Just because solutions don't exist out there doesn't mean you can't develop your own, particularly if they have good, positive ROI. There are plenty of people doing innovative things, and there are plenty of solutions that don't exist. The trade show floor here [at GBTA's annual convention in Los Angeles] is filled with lots of people offering solutions, but there's plenty of unanswered problems or unsolved problems.
BTN: A lot of people don't have access to the IT resources that you do, especially at smaller companies. What would you say to them?
Mandelbaum: I would say they should. I would say that if there's positive ROI in the project, it's a worthwhile investment. It's not about access to technical resources, it's about determining whether it's worth the investment. In some cases, we've made the investment because it's about employee engagement. In other cases, we think that there is a savings offset in it. Probably a little bit of that we just think it's the right thing to do. I would say if there's a good business case, the company should do it. You have to work that out in your budget.
This report originally appeared in the Aug. 25, 2014, edition of Business Travel News.