Changing perspectives: the value of the TMC redefined

FCM INSIGHT

The Covid-19 crisis has forced many organisations, large and small, to re-evaluate different aspects of their business. Needs and priorities have changed, and with that, so too has our perspective on what we deem valuable.

This time of upheaval and uncertainty has proven to many businesses the true value of working with a travel management company (TMC). Indeed, it’s often when things go wrong—when flights are cancelled, or a traveller requires medical assistance—when you wish you had a professional to step in and find a solution.

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A TMC will make sure that your travel programme achieves this healthy balance, while aligning to your business objectives, as well as the times. Here’s why these three components—people, process and technology—are key for sustainable business success going forward.

PeopleYour people are the bedrock of your business. Now more than ever, it is essential to ensure they are happy, healthy and looked-after. A TMC will help you keep your travellers at the centre of your business travel programme through duty of care, personalisation, and dedicated agent support. This goes a long way in improving employee satisfaction. And employee satisfaction, in turn, has a reciprocal effect in strengthening an organisation from within—boosting morale, productivity, and loyalty amongst staff.

ProcessProcesses serve as the blueprint for your business travel programme. These include your travel policy, duty of care policy, approval process, expense reporting, and other workflows including a process for review.

As significant a role processes play in travel management, processes need to be configured to the needs of your business and your travellers—not the other way around. TMCs will advise businesses on integrating their travel policy in an end-to-end process that is straightforward and friction-free.

TechnologyTravel tech is no longer confined to the leisure travel space. Business travellers have a host of custom tools, platforms, and apps, specifically designed to meet their unique set of needs.

A TMC will ensure that your business is lever-aging technology appropriately and identify gaps where a tech solution is needed. This isn’t tech for tech’s sake. Cutting-edge, innovative tech is great, but if it isn’t addressing an actual need or helping to achieve your organisation’s goals, then it likely isn’t adding value.

BALANCING PEOPLE, PROCESS AND TECHNOLOGY

When looking to optimise any programme, project, or operation in your business, striking a balance between people, process and technology is generally believed to be an effective, back-to-basics approach—especially applicable in the current landscape of business travel.

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BENEFITS OF WORKING WITH A TMC

Whether it’s a time of crisis or business as usual, a TMC offers tangible benefits that extend well beyond your travel programme, affecting decision making, employee satisfaction, and your business’ bottom line.

Each of these functional benefits comprises the three critical components—people, process and technology. Take for instance a new, tech-forward booking platform. It may have all the bells and whistles, but it’s only a benefit to the business if users see the platform’s value and are empowered to adopt it, and likewise, if the processes around it (e.g. policies, workflows) help drive usage behaviour.

Dedicated agent supportA solid TMC is your safety net when things don’t go as planned. Twenty-four-hour, real-time support is crucial for business travellers who are balancing work and travel, and navigating new destinations in addition to the ‘new normal’ of heightened travel restrictions and hygiene protocols.

While the travel world may be going touchless, the human connection that a TMC agent can provide has never been more valuable. Here are some of the ways in which a travel professional will provide support at every step of the traveller journey:

• Make sense of information overload. For example, FCM Travel Solutions has launched a dedicated travel news hub, a resource which will support travellers and companies with up-to-date information and relevant facts.

• Help in a crisis. When things go awry, a TMC agent has the tools, supplier relationships and wherewithal to rebook, renegotiate and reorganise travel on your behalf.

• Professional advice. Reputable TMCs have a wealth of experience. They know which airlines run on time, which connections are the quickest and most reliable, when transit visas are required and which tickets, (e.g. flexible fares) to book.

• Return on investment. A TMC can pass on savings by tapping into deals and global buying power that are unavailable to individual companies. Data collected and analysed by a TMC can also identify expense trends and missed savings.

• Duty of care. TMCs operate within a duty of care, which means they are obliged to bring you and your team home safely.

It is important for TMC support channels to be sufficiently accessible, whether through live messaging and chat platforms or through a blended technology approach that complements the expert experience of an agent with chatbots and travel assistants powered by artificial intelligence.

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Data management capabilityFrom flight and accommodation bookings to individual preferences and per diem expenses—business travel generates heaps of data. By partnering with a TMC, you can put this data to work, automating the process of data mining and analysis to derive actionable, real-time insights to help guide better decision-making in a time when many are suffering from decision-paralysis.

The ability of a TMC to effectively manage your travel data is contingent on its use of smart analytics. FCM Travel Solutions has a system that tracks corporate travel data to reveal trends and inconsistencies in travel patterns. By knowing exactly how well your travel plan is functioning you can make changes to optimise your strategy in both the short and long term.

Cost controlCost control is likely high on every travel manager’s list of priorities, no more so than now, with many companies looking to safeguard cashflow and optimise budgets against further economic downturn. Fortunately, TMCs are experts at deriving savings within a business travel programme.

Key to cost control is transparency. A TMC will ensure that the system it introduces enables the user to gain a clear, concise overview of travel spend related to accommodation, flights, car rentals and per diem expenses. By automating this reporting and consolidating all travel expense data in one place, travel managers can detect programme leakage and missed savings, as well as save time otherwise spent with manual reporting.

FCM Travel Solutions provides immediate visibility of an organisation’s comprehensive travel spend, as well as greater cost control through its flexible payment options, which include billbacks, travel lodge cards and interest-free credit accounts.

Commitment to duty of careTMCs have a key role to play in supporting their clients’ duty of care responsibilities. Your travel professional will help you craft a duty of care policy that considers all possible steps—pre-, during and post-travel. This relies on having clearly outlined strategies in place to prevent, support and respond to possible travel risks.

The core services a TMC will offer under duty of care include:

• Vetting process for suppliers• Pre-travel risk assessment• Traveller tracking• Real-time alerts and assistance

While these core services can effectively anticipate, manage, and eliminate common travel risk factors, the current environment has left traveller apprehension and anxiety at an all-time high. With business travel during Covid-19, there are a lot of moving parts, and the last thing travellers want to worry about are issues of health, safety, and unexpected restrictions.

A TMC will help combat the spectre of uncertainty brought on by the pandemic by enhancing the services above, preparing travellers with what to expect, and providing up-to-date information on their destination, including border and health regulations and supplier updates.

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FCM INSIGHT

A holistic approachPhysical and mental wellbeing are now more than ever contributing factors for employee satisfaction. And a modern TMC will look at traveller wellbeing using a holistic approach, understanding that it comprises several factors, from the obvious to the nuanced, and deserves an equally diverse set of solutions.

In addition to traveller health, safety and security—the base of the business traveller’s hierarchy of needs if you will—productivity and engagement are also measures of effective travel and duty of care policies.

TMCs help businesses and their travellers achieve greater productivity by undertaking the following:

• Streamline internal processes. By replacing inefficient, manual travel and expense processes with an automated and centralised system, both travellers and travel managers save time and effort.

• Reduce idle time for the traveller. A seamless traveller experience smooths areas of friction and cuts out idle time spent waiting. Think preferred flight and ground connections, priority boarding, luggage services, etc.

• Align suppliers with business needs. Ensure your suppliers’ offerings are conducive to your travellers’ performance, e.g. airlines with extra room and on-board Wi-Fi, comfortable accommodation, etc.

To keep travellers satisfied and committed to their work, a well-designed travel programme must also prioritise traveller engagement by enabling the following:

• Personalisation. Ensure that travellers have access to their loyalty programmes and preferred airline and accommodation options, and configure technology to remember these preferences.

• Flexibility. Say a traveller wants to opt for an upgrade, or make it a bleisure trip and tack on a few extra days. Systems and processes must be sufficiently flexible for the modern traveller.

• Convenience. This is related to a traveller’s productivity but can have an equally large impact on level of engagement.

Boost compliance Your TMC should work with you to encourage compliance by integrating transparent policies into your travel management and booking platform. There should be a process for regular review and channels through which employees can provide constructive feedback.

Fostering a culture of compliance is not always an easy task. Too forceful of an approach and your employees may just see it as a means of reducing company costs at their expense. But compliance is crucial for ensuring traveller safety, and this should be apparent to all stakeholders.

If your travel programme’s rate of non-compliance is a concern, a TMC can apply data analytics and behavioural economics to uncover the drivers behind non-compliance, thereby enabling you to respond appropriately, e.g. clearly communicating the benefits of compliance, offering training, or adapting policies to better align with travellers’ needs and preferences.

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