Research by Cranfield University and Amadeus, published last month, found that company culture and structure dictated the adoption rate of self booking tools (SBTs).
Here Serge Bacchus, European travel manager of US IT and consulting company Unisys, tells BTE how he adopted the SBT in 14 countries in his territory.
The project began two years ago in Europe after the US arm of the company had already implemented the Cliqbook SBT.
"We decided we would adopt the same tool as the US. We started in the UK in 2004 and it was quite a long process and more complicated than we expected," Mr Bacchus said.
The work was done in conjunction with the company's GDS Sabre and its sole TMC, American Express.
The first step was communication to the company's 2,500 travellers (about 300-400 travel on a regular basis); the second was training and third was the decision to mandate the tool's use "from Day One."
Mr Bacchus said the support of top management to the project was "crucial." A global communication was followed by local communications - this again was crucial, he said, to demonstrate that each country director supported the change. "This communication was signed by the local country manager as this was better than someone the local staff had never heard of.
"People realised that it was a corporate project, not an option, not a toy and so they had to do it," he said.
It was also important that all major departments were brought into the project, including finance, HR and IT. "Everyone in the main departments had to be involved," he said.
The training was equally important. Mr Bacchus visited every single country where the tool was being adopted at least once, usually twice or more. "If you want them to buy in, you must offer them the training," he said.
The bottom line was persuading travellers to change their behaviour otherwise the adoption would not work.
Training consisted of four to five hourly sessions which featured demonstrations, case studies, a chance for the staff to use the SBT and an opportunity to ask any questions.
When the day came to switch, the policy was mandated and achieved "nearly 100%" adoption.
After the UK, Unisys has implemented the tool in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Portugal and the four Nordic countries: Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland.
Next on the list are Austria, Switzerland and Italy.
Mr Bacchus said it was helped by Unisys's straightforward travel policy which requires travellers to take the cheapest fare. But two other conditions were imposed: that all bookings must be done where possible 14 days before departure and all trips needed approval from US Headquarters.
The exceptions to SBT use were complex trips and emergency/late booking trips which could still be done through the TMC.
Mr Bacchus also said that Cliqbook was "easy to use and very friendly."
But it was not done without problems. "Two years ago, I did not believe it would be so complicated. It had to be done country by country," he said.
"Some countries had local specificities like the Air France discount card, the Spanish shuttle or SAS business fares cheaper than Economy. Cliqbook had to update their software and deal with these local specificities which was not as simple as we would have guessed.
"In the best case, in two to three months, everything would have been set up. But it did not happen that way."
Some local managers were doubtful about self booking, not wanting people to spend time on booking trips, and Mr Bacchus said that "some countries were totally against the tool but at the end of the day our 14 countries stuck to this project and the implementation was successful from day one."
But there were major pluses, savings in both time and money.
Travellers could cut the time to make a booking from ten-15 minutes when they first started to one minute when they were experienced.
Unisys found that savings varied from country to country from 10% to 20%. This was mainly on air spend where Mr Bacchus said the collective saving were around $50m.
Company policy also led to people travelling less and when on trips spending fewer nights away. The result here was that the hotel spend was "dramatically reduced."
Mr Bacchus also said that because the policy was mandated, he got a better return on investment than companies which did not mandate and got a 30% adoption rate in the first year, gradually rising to 60% a couple of years or so later.
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