The BCD Travel Insight on Corporate Travel 2008 revealed the unsurprising fact that the focus of the vast bulk of companies was on reducing costs. But a deeper look revealed not only how the role, but also the status of travel managers, is changing.
In some areas their companies rely on them heavily. In other areas, they are barely consulted at all.
If there are any lingering doubts as to who was now in charge of a company's travel programme, the BCD survey should end it. It found that 74% of its respondents now report to procurement, 10% to finance, 6% to human resources (HR), 4% to corporate services, 1% to administration and 5% elsewhere.
Compare this to 2004 – just four years ago: 27% reported to procurement, 30% to finance, 12% to HR, 17% to corporate services and 14% to administration. Procurement now rules – no question.
Similarly the role and status of the buyer is changing. The areas where the buyer respondents say they have most influence, amounting to full responsibility, are: traveller safety where 36% said they had full charge, corporate social responsibility (34%), expense management process (32%), regulatory compliance (29%), travel policy review (26%) and planning and booking processes (25%).
The areas where the buyers felt they acted in an advisory role were: category management of air, hotels and cars (70%), travel policy strategy (72%), sourcing hotel, air and cars (74%), traveller satisfaction (42%), policy design (52%), planning and booking (48%), payment systems (44%) and sourcing of trip (47%).
More significantly there were areas where buyers felt they had no influence at all. These were: the number of trips taken (60%0, traveller safety and security (19%), expense management programme (19%), payment systems (19%) and traveller satisfaction (19%).
So in about one fifth of companies, the buyer is excluded from what many would describe as crucial areas for both managed travel and cutting costs.
Mark Williams, vp global business development for Advito, BCD's consulting arm, said the travel managers used to make recommendations on the strength of their MI.
"Now to implement any meaningful change, they must gain buy-in from many stakeholders and communities. It lengthens the process and also increases the communications that travel managers need to provide," he added.
It meant that travel managers had to build up more internal relationships and that negotiating skills have become a necessary part of their skill set.
For example, Mr Williams said that air deals, a foundation of many managed travel policies, could now be up to 25 pages long.
He said that buyers now needed to have strong analytical skills or, as was happening more and more, get external sources involved in the management.
Mr Williams concluded that the buyers were becoming "more advisory" in a wider range of roles, getting involved at virtually every stage of the travel programme management from sourcing to settlement - yet they rarely had control over the entire programme.
But buyers seem increasingly valued by their companies as BCD remarks that they are being given an “increasingly wide range of responsibilities.” For example, 43% said they now had full responsibility or were involved in an advisory role for decisions on long term accommodation while 20% said they were also now responsible for company mobile phones.
This vague feeling that travel managers could be in office but not in power is strengthened by one of the odd findings the survey threw up.
When asked what were the main challenges facing buyers, the global reply was getting data, rising costs, policy compliance, supplier negotiations and security. Nothing unusual there.
But when these finding were analysed by region, Europe said something different. Among the challenges over negotiations, forcing compliance and getting data, was, at number four, getting senior management support.
No other region, not the sophisticated market of North America nor the less mature markets of Asia and Latin America even mention this. But as BCD comments, getting management support is "critical" for a successfully managed policy. It adds that getting this support from the "C-level executive" (the ones with chief in their titles) was a "key challenge for many companies." This is quite astonishing.
Companies in Europe are giving buyers of travel more and more responsibility in what is a critical area for costs - but with out C-level backing.
BCD recommends those in this situation should identify all their objectives and who the owners are. But they also need to make senior executive aware of the value of a successfully managed travel programme.
This can be done, says BCD, through "identifying and nurturing" a top manager who can "own" travel.
But it still beggars the question as to why this has to be done.