Pilot scheme declared a success
Microsoft has saved $700,000 by replacing travel to mid-year assessments with virtual meetings.
Under a pilot scheme, 350 people taking part in the assessments used teleconferencing facilities instead of face to face meetings, Julia Heesterman, the IT company's travel manager for EMEA.
She said the aims of the scheme were to save travelling time, cut costs and protect to the environment.
Ms Heesterman told the Association of Corporate Travel Executives' (ACTE) Global Education Conference in Prague today (October 26) that the scheme was successful.
She said the staff were used to face to face meetings so virtual meetings were not welcomed at first.
But the meetings software was by LiveMeetings which was more informal than other products and the feedback was "excellent."
She told a session on opportunities for travel managers that it was essential both to make the staff familiar with the software and to get IT involved as they would be need in case anything went wrong.
"We had been doing conference calling for years but this was relatively new," Ms Heesterman said.
She said the pilot had also attracted the interest of senior management who were interested in the costs and time savings.
As part of its costs savings, Microsoft also targeted some of its top travellers and asked them to take out one of their trips over a six month period and use LiveMeetings instead.
This had led to a fall in travel and a rise in the use of the alternative. The company was now continuing with this scheme.
In the same session, Mick Lee, managing director of Citigroup Global Travel, urged travel managers to focus more on the strategic side of their job and less on the service side.
She said travel managers had skills which could be used in other parts of the company and in other industries, including negotiating and sales and marketing.
"This is not about changing your job but about changing your position and re-formatting your current role," she said.
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