Koreen Barbara
Global Travel Manager
McDonald's
Innovative. Collaborative. Transparent. Clear. A pioneer. These are just a few of the adjectives used by suppliers to describe McDonald’s global travel manager Koreen Barbara.
Over the past 18 months, Barbara has condensed McDonald's travel program in 23 markets to two travel management companies down from 10 and three booking tools down from eight. She intentionally split her program. One TMC is Direct Travel, with its new modular Avenir product and partnership with Spotnana, for North America and the U.K., which addresses 80 percent of her program needs. FCM covers the other 20 percent, mostly in Europe, the Middle East and Africa and Asia-Pacific. PredictX also is part of the ecosystem, enabling a single data platform.
The transformation affected more than 5,000 travelers and consolidated $50 million in total travel spend and provides consistent service models across both TMCs and more modern technology that delivers a consumer-grade experience focusing on content, self-service and personalization, Barbara said.
"She wanted to find a way to put a strategy together that was going to enable her to future-proof her program," said Navan chief travel advisory officer Kim Hamer, who worked with Barbara when Hamer was at the Garner Network before joining Navan. "What's really important from a buyer perspective is that you're asking all of the right questions. … What do [suppliers] have available today and where do you think they're going to be tomorrow? If they're not meeting your needs today, [you] have to decide, is this someone I want to partner with and grow with or not?"
Hamer added that Barbara knew where her current gaps were and had done a lot of research and discovery on what was available in the market. For her stakeholders, "the ones that had a greater appetite for change is where she had more willingness to choose a supplier that met those needs versus someone that may not have been ready," Hamer said. "If you look at from A to Z, maybe she was at J, but she wanted to get to Z, and some were only willing to go to L, and others were willing to go to X, knowing Z may not be possible today. So, she said, 'how do I map this out from a change management perspective on what the appetite is in these markets? And how do I work with them on a future strategy that's going to get me to Z over a period of time?' "
"We did a pilot that went really well," Barbara said. "Spotnana and Direct Travel were really, really strong in North America. At that time, they had a lot to do in APAC, so we said, 'you do what you need to do.' " Language and payment also were important for her program. "I have an Excel document that is color-coded in a traffic light system of languages and payments, and that drove a lot of our decision on why we decided to go with Direct Travel for North America and the U.K. Then FCM did a brilliant job at showcasing what we needed for languages, in-country service and payments."
Barbara also was very intentional in her strategy and decision to make sure she was focused on the user experience and bringing to her travelers something that she felt they hadn't had before that she could build on, Hamer added.
Meeting the Moment
One of those new experiences she helped develop with Direct Travel is Avenir's events module, which is powered by Spotnana. Barbara had a special meeting for executives and McDonald's franchisees, some of whom don't travel much for work, and she wanted to make it simple for them to plan their trips. What resulted from her needs and requests was a product where the meeting owner inputs the logistics for the event and uploads an attendee list, who get an automated message with a link to the events tool.
"The tool knows where they're based, where they need to go, the dates and parameters around that, and then it guides them through the booking process, so they don't book the wrong week or go to the wrong airport," Direct Travel chief sales officer Todd Pelletier said. "And because it sits within the Avenir platform, [McDonald's] can see who booked when and what they spent. They can also see the savings."
The functionality created for the McDonald's event was "100 percent built into the product," Pelletier said, and is available to other clients.
Data Driven Distribution
Barbara also was instrumental in helping Direct Travel transition from global distribution systems to direct connect connectivity for preferred suppliers. "Koreen was well set up with the data she brought to us," Pelletier said. "She gave us a chart country by country and showed us exactly what was needed in these countries, who their primary suppliers were, with very solid data. We don't always see that. She was polished, and that was really helpful."
Direct Travel then sat down with Spotnana and made sure they worked together to develop the proper direct connects to cover Barbara's needs for those specific markets, Pelletier said, which then benefits other customers who have the same needs.
That also is the case with building out Avenir overall. "Koreen comes forward on a regular basis and offers us feedback and support on what we are doing," Pelletier said. "She's been integral in Direct Travel's direction and in [giving] feedback and helping us to continue to form this out on a global basis. Frankly, that's been a huge part of our journey together and has put us in a much better position as a major global supplier now to service our other customers."
Since launching on March 23, Barbara has seen self-service bookings at more than 95 percent, savings of $12.34 per booking (March to June) and year-to-date for NDC/direct-connect adoption from the U.S. point of sale at 45 percent.
Barbara also championed smaller, but meaningful, details like integrating Microsoft Outlook calendar with Avenir. Trip details are automatically added to travelers' calendars from their reservations, eliminating manual trip management and calendar updates. This, too, is available now to all Avenir clients.
First-Mover Partnership
Because McDonald's program is split between two major TMC partners, Barbara knew from the outset she would need to bring the data together to drive holistic visibility for administration and supplier management as well as for program functionality. McDonald's already had AI-powered PredictX in play for other data categories in the company, but PredictX and Spotnana had not worked together before.
"Koreen was the pioneer with us to go down that road to establish that feed and get that set up correctly," Pelletier said. "That's become a standard within Avenir to supply anybody else because now we have other companies we're working with that want to work with PredictX."
Phases one and two of the PredictX integration are completed, with three and four in process, founder and CEO Keesup Choe said. The first phases were how much the company is spending and with whom, and what is the leakage.
"For McDonald's, we incorporated all these different data feeds to bring everything together and give the insights Koreen needs to figure out what's the focal point, what are the gaps," Choe said. "The key is understanding what the priorities are and how to drive that development, which is what she's done really well."
"We've gone through a lot of trial and error and testing with [Direct Travel and PredictX] to be able to bring that data in," Barbara said. "It's been a labor of love, and everybody's been involved in that space. I would say we can smell the finish line."
One outcome of that data strategy tackles hotel leakage. Barbara looked at the properties travelers were booking outside of the program, and where it made sense, she negotiated with those hotels, and brought them into the program, Choe said. She also "within minutes" was able to analyze 12 months of travel volume and spend patterns in India to "see where volumes and spend were landing to guide our sourcing approach," Barbara said.
When all is finished, McDonald's will have "unfragmented, cleansed, and centralized corporate card, expense and travel data all in one platform," Barbara said.
The next phases of the integration include incorporating AI, which can automate work. "That's going to keep growing as we roll out more capability for her," Choe said. "She's taken it really well [and is] a strong user of AI among all our clients. She's full of lots of ideas, and you can be sure that lots of those ideas are in our roadmap."
Choe added that "we probably work better with FCM and Direct Travel for McDonald's than almost any other client."
The reason for that is because of Barbara, he said, noting that "it's quite obvious" that the account managers at Direct Travel and FCM "really like working with Koreen," and "though it may be subconscious, people do more and go out their way to help people they like. She has a good way of forming those relationships. It's a unique combination of clarity and that she can motivate her patterns to go out of their way to help her."
Choe also mentioned three other things that made Barbara stand out to him. She was very clear about her vision and priorities of what were the most important things to focus on, "because you can't do everything at once," he said. She understands that travel is about helping and nudging the behavior of the travelers, "which was pretty unique about Koreen." And she has elevated her travel manager role into a strategic function in McDonald's.
"It's fair to say that senior leadership within an organization [often] doesn't really understand travel and the importance of travel," Choe said. "She helped make it into a strategic function by aligning it with the culture of McDonald's … and understanding how to engage senior leadership. We have business review meeting with our clients. She is the only one who brought her senior leadership to that review meeting. She wanted to show them the vision, we talked about the implementation, what phases three and four will bring and how the organization can leverage that. It's very smart. … And she's a team of two. It's quite remarkable how much she gets done."