BBT caught up with the travel services and meetings and events leaders for EY to talk about demands of business travellers, major challenges and advice for fellow buyers...
How many travellers and trips doesthe EY travel team handle?
Currently, we have 210,000 employees globally, and we have 850,000 air transactions projected for this financial year, July 2014 to June 2015. Around 20 per cent of employees are regarded as ‘frequent travellers’ and spend more than 100 nights or more away from home per annum.
How do you meet growing demandfor travel while maintaining budgets?
Over the last 18 months, we conducted regional requests for proposals [RFPs], which resulted in the implementation of three travel management companies [TMCs] worldwide. This TMC consolidation gives us greater visibility of the travel patterns of our employees, and we use the data we receive to drive behaviour changes. We have conducted global airline and hotel RFPs, but there is only so much you can do to reduce the actual rates.
How do you communicate with your travellers?
Stakeholder engagement and communication with travellers is a key part of the travel team’s role. We use a variety of channels to connect: in-person meetings, our intranet, Yammer and targeted emails. One key message to our travellers is the positive impact they can have on our indirect cost containment by following the travel policy, and we have seen an improvement in policy compliance over the past year. We send out travel alerts, special offers and general information on the travel programme via our Yammer group, which has become the most highly-rated group in EY. We think the large audience is indicative of the satisfaction our people have in our travel programme.
Describe your relationships with your TMCs and key suppliers?
We work very collaboratively with all our suppliers and, in particular, with our dedicated teams from the TMCs. Regardless of whether someone works for the agency or for EY, we work together as one team. We openly share our objectives with the TMCs so that they can help us achieve our goals. Ultimately, if we are successful, the TMCs will be as well, as their business plans are aligned with our goals. We have a significant spend with most suppliers, and are more often than not in their top ten spending clients.
What do you see as the major challenges for the future?
I think embracing technology and addressing the preferences and needs of the younger traveller are going to be critical. There are new types of supplier coming into the market that cater to the tech-savvy younger traveller. Our travellers will use the tools these suppliers offer, whether we like it or not, so embracing these new suppliers and tools, and figuring out how we can work together, will be vital in the future.
EY’s Travel Services team won Travel Team of the Year at the Business Travel Awards 2015...
We are a diverse team with a shared vision and clear collective objectives, so winning this award, while an honour for us all, was testament to everything we have put in place and achieved over the past 18 months. The pace of work has been relentless, and to be recognised for this was the ultimate accolade. Personally, it was one of the highlights of my career, and to achieve this with such a wonderful team made it all the more rewarding.
What is the next big challenge for the team?
If we continue to deliver what we promised, and ensure we demonstrate not just the quantitative value but the qualitative value that we bring, we will continue to be at the leading edge of travel management. Globalising our meetings and events programme is high on our priority list, and adopting the same principles we followed with travel will help to make this next project a success.
What advice would you give to anyone considering a career in travel management?
I would say that for anyone considering going into the travel industry – do it! Travel is an amazing business to be in, and there are many different areas to choose from, including agencies, airlines, hotels and corporate. Key qualities for travel team members are being able to build strong relationships and having robust influencing skills. As I regularly tell my team, we are sales people working with stakeholders and travellers to get them to change behaviour for the benefit of EY and for the reduction of travel expense.
Headquartered in London, EY is a global professional services organisation with some 210,000 employees working out of 700-plus offices in more than 150 countries worldwide. In 2014, EY reported global revenues of US$27.4 billion.