"Remind me why we have a travel programme again?" is a question many travel managers regularly face from travellers frustrated by out of date processes, poor technology and seemingly high charges.
Customer centricity, we are all told, is the key to a successful travel programme - providing travellers with technology so good, providing choice (or sometimes just an illusion of) so varied, and monitoring and support that is so subtle that it feels like they are using consumer programmes. But more often than not, corporate travel technology is nowhere near as slick as in the consumer world.
Additionally the traveller sees the costs of administering the programme, costs which are largely hidden by consumer sites, and we are constantly battling against leakage. So how do we create a something so slick and an argument so compelling for the continued use of a managed travel programme?
Efficient, integrated and seamless payment and reimbursement processes are a pretty good place to start. After all, people are amazingly compliant when it comes to getting their money back. But some factors need to be considered for this to work effectively.
Start with channels and choice
The inconvenient truth is that the benefits of a managed travel programme, the knowledge that someone is there to support them, leveraging spend and data etc are just almost not felt or appreciated by the majority of road warriors travelling between point A and B within developed countries.
A lot of this depends on your culture and DNA. You may apply a 'command and control' culture, where you simply tell travellers what to do in policy, and the role of a travel manager is to dispense consequences for those who don't.
But this mythical 'mandate culture' is just no longer appropriate for many organisations. Removing the illusion of choice is not exactly modern thinking and hardly ticks the traveller centricity box. Remove choice and satisfaction goes down and complaints go up; travel is subjective and travellers will be very quick to tell you why the process doesn't work for them and hampers their ability to be productive.
Give them choice, however, and make it easy for them to use the preferred channel (and slightly more difficult to use a non preferred channel) and satisfaction will rise as it's a much more positive message.
Get your fees right
There is a cost to running a travel programme but be savvy about who sees what costs and when. Costs that might generate difficult messages may be better taken centrally. Placing TMC fees on lower cost, low value transactions which are very easy to book direct are more likely to drive people off-programme, as it creates the motivation for doing it.
Let's consider an example outside of travel such as the cost of running the beautifully presented reception desks in our offices. No-one would question that large corporations need them to reflect a great corporate image and manage safety and security but what if the costs of running them were charged on a per visitor basis? Just imagine…
"Yes Mr Pouney I will book your visitor in, but I just need to charge the £20 booking fee to your corporate card. But you have to use us Mr Pouney or you will be out of policy if you don't".
Consider the bad behaviour that would drive. Fire escapes would be opened to let visitors 'sneak' in through the back or people would go and have meetings elsewhere, discussing confidential information in coffee shops all over the land and buying rounds of coffees for £10 'to save the company £10'. The £20 fee would not go away and is a 'sunk cost' so the organisation pays it anyway, ends up paying more, and reputation, image and employee productivity is damaged.
We wouldn't do this in reception services, so why do it in travel?
Create workflows that support compliant bookings
I can still recall 20 years ago people were announcing 'the death of the billback': the process by which invoices, particularly hotels, were sent back to the company normally via the agent. The future, we were told, will be that everyone will pay on their own card giving the company the ultimate choice of not reimbursing for expense they don't like the look of the transaction.
Well despite many talking about it, I've never met a company to date who has withheld reimbursement for anything other than the most blatant cases of fraud. The reality is that in many cases people who travel out of policy do so because they can — they consider themselves senior enough that such processes don't apply to them and in many cases they are probably right. It can be career limiting for a travel manager to take on someone five grades higher over bad buying behaviour.
Chances are you need a hybrid approach: a billback / virtual payment process for new starters, graduates and consultants, and an individual card for more frequent travellers. Many companies allow the use of personal cards if travellers wish.
Remember though, that whatever payment method you use, there will be a knock on method to both the approval and reconciliation process.
Don't sweat the small stuff
Do you really care if someone books a £30 train ticket outside of your programme or uses their own corporate card for expenses? If not then make sure that you really want to have that precious 10 minute meeting with a senior stakeholder about their assistant's booking behaviour.
Retain your credibility for the more meaningful arguments where you can add more value; choose your battles wisely.
Be engaged early on and get communication right
I'm constantly surprised at how many travel managers are completely disinterested in payment as a topic, until a new expense tool is selected or payment card is chosen. Then all of a sudden their world is turned upside down as the choices they thought they had on OBT or TMC strategy have now been made for them.
"If you are not at the table you are on the menu," said US senator Michael Enzi. Travel managers need to put themselves in the heart of the discussion around expense systems, processes and strategies as they have a huge impact on how successful the travel programme will be.
Also, you can't blame a traveller for wanting to stay in a nicer hotel or stay in a higher class, that's human nature. But you can equip the line manager with the ammunition to push back, explain the bigger picture and offer reasonable alternatives.
The majority of people want to do the right thing so if you make it easy for them to do so the chances are they will comply.
Make payment simple, painless and critical and join in the conversation in your own company.
Ultimately the best way of answering the question of "remind me why we have a managed travel programme again?" is to simply not be asked it in the first place. Adopt integrated, common sense and workflow-driven payment processes which means travel journeys flow more easily when you follow policy than when you don't.