Op-Ed: Providing Senior Management With A Valued Program
<B> Op-Ed: Providing Senior Management With A Valued Program</B>
By Betty Lucero
What does senior management consider valuable regarding cost avoidance initiatives like travel? Is it possible to create a travel program that is considered valuable by senior management? Should the travel program encompass other factors considered valuable that are not financial considerations, such as human and social factors, and risk management?
These aren't easy questions, but they are essential for a travel manager to succeed, and more importantly, for a travel program to make an ongoing contribution to a company's bottom line.
A well managed travel program needs to provide value in ways including maximizing cost avoidance opportunities, solid supplier relationships, and providing service and consideration to travelers who represent the company to everyone they meet. So how do you get from here to there?
Start with an introspective assessment of your skills. Include others in your assessment who will provide you with honest and constructive feedback. What skills do you bring to the party? What do you need to learn? From whom do you need to learn these skills? Have you developed solid relationships in the IT, finance, accounting, risk management, telecommunications, human resources and purchasing departments? Learn their language and use it to describe the value of your travel program.
The next step is to assess your audience. You need to engage your boss, peers and senior managers in discussions about the travel program you have or will create. How do they prioritize travel in the big picture? How do they rate and measure the value of an undertaking like travel? How can you translate and apply the measurements that are important to senior managers to your travel program? What motivates them?
How much time to you devote to planning a strategy for your travel program? Do you have a strategy in place that clearly establishes personal, program and supplier goals, short and long term? If you have, what does your strategy look like: Does it encompass more than travel operations, policy and supplier negotiations? If you haven't developed a strategy, consider starting this process.
If you haven't made the time to think about your strategy, do so now. In an industry that is moving as quickly as business travel, you may find that you haven't been able to keep up. By determining the tasks required to support your strategy, and defining the expected outcome, you can at least be better prepared when the changes occur.
The human factor is equally important to the bottom line contribution the travel program makes. If travelers and arrangers aren't happy, senior management will not be either. Do you and your travel management company have a solid plan to measure satisfaction levels effectively? What percentage of the travelers/arrangers provide feedback to help you improve the value of the program? What do you do with the information they provide? How do you inform senior management about the results of the satisfaction levels and the corrective action plan?
How well do you manage your supplier relationships? Again, honest and constructive feedback is helpful to answer this question. Do you get insight from other travel managers? Do you interact with more than just your suppliers' account executive?
The next step is to create techniques to convey the value of the travel program. Key is the value of the data. Where does it come from? How does the source define the data? What are the comparisons and trends you can extract from the data? What data is important to senior management? How do you use data to drive the decision you need to make about your travel program?
Several sources are available as to how to create effective reports for senior management, but if you don't have data that you understand inside and out, you will jeopardize your credibility. Be prepared to answer specific questions, and answer them in the language your audience uses, not travel lingo. Providing too many details also can shoot your credibility. Learn to gauge when enough is enough.
Creating value is much more than producing a set of dynamite reports. It requires that you understand the content of the reports, the definitions of the data you used to create the reports, and all the decisions that were made to convey your message. It's up to you to seek out the resources to strengthen your skills and knowledge base. There are more resources available now than ever before. Use them to the full advantage.
<I>Betty Lucero is manager of corporate travel for investment management company Capital Group Companies Inc. in Los Angeles.