Follow our step-by-step guide to ensure your ideas for your company’s travel programme are heard and get the green light

Kelly Preece is a no-nonsense procurement professional. She has spent the last three years in the Edinburgh offices of AEGON UK, part of the global pensions investment giant AEGON, initially as travel manager and latterly as sourcing specialist. Having joined at a critical time – FCm had just been appointed and the previous travel manager had left some time before – there was something of a hiatus and Preece initially kept the status quo to provide some stability for the 180 travel coordinators. These are the frontline between the travellers and the TMC. “I came into a fire fighting role and I needed to change the perception and build confidence with the coordinators of the new travel management company, FCm,” Preece recalls. To understand the current situation with AEGON and travel management, Preece set up a Travel Coordinators Forum Group. The group enabled Preece to gather important information, weekly feedback and an opportunity to discuss potential improvements. Preece soon could see that it would make more sense to move away from a full-time travel manager role. “We didn’t need somebody 100 per cent of the time,“ she says, and she put forward to her boss the idea of re-engineering the role. Through internal changes, Preece reduced the travel manager role to 50 per cent of her time, however she then believed a further reduction to 20 per cent was possible. The next step in reducing Preece’s role was predicated on having an account manager who understood where AEGON was trying to get to. ”That’s where a travel management company really adds value,” Preece firmly believes. “Operations are extremely important but account management is where the real value add is,” says Preece. Such a scheme required much preparatory work internally before FCm could take on this extra responsibility. Read on for how Preece, AEGON and FCm achieved this goal.

STEP 1: FCm and AEGON had to plan exactly how best Preece could re-engineer her role. FCm provide a bespoke team of six agents working in conjunction with Sue Reeves as account manager. “We knew they wanted to outsource the travel manager’s role to our account management team and effectively make her role redundant in the nicest possible way,” says Reeves. FCm met with AEGON to discuss the plan and Reeves put her thinking cap on. “It presents an opportunity and I came away from that meeting and looked at the raw data, how they made their reservations, the data capture fields, why they travel, and all the nuts and bolts. We had to look at it from the other side.” FCm effectively undertook a complete review of AEGON’s travel business based on Reeves’ analysis, and looked at what was dragging on Kelly’s time and what could make her life easier.

STEP 2: The changes were very gradual and what has changed is FCm taking on the supplier analysis, benchmarking and recommendations, allowing Preece to focus on negotiating the deals with suppliers. On hotel RFPs, FCm and AEGON use a joint approach, with FCm looking at all the value adds, site inspections and so on. MI is now presented in a different format with the result that more accurate data is sent through to the client. Cost centre mapping goes on behind the scenes so all budgets are always up to date on a monthly basis. Face to face meetings between the client and TMC remain on a quarterly basis but they have also introduced a weekly or fortnightly conference call so that issues are discussed more regularly. “I still have a light control,” says Preece. The cost to AEGON has not increased, as the number of account management days chargeable to the client has not changed. Internally, AEGON saved the services of a data analyst and FCm now creates MI reports for the client each month. “We’re basically empowering FCm and the travel co-ordinators,” says Preece.

STEP 3: The review also threw up cost saving ideas. “There were areas surrounding communication of policy, advance booking, tightening up on policy and compliance,” says Reeves. AEGON was very receptive to the ideas and a lot of the changes were rolled out and communicated to the operations team and lead bookers. The travel policy was never changed as AEGON does not have a mandating culture but instead encourages new behaviour among travellers.

STEP 4: Compliance to policy with hotels is rising while the average room rate is decreasing. “Kelly’s delighted with the 180- degree turnaround,” says Alex Cousins, FCm's director of account management. Reeves adds: “Savings have been one of the positive outcomes.” For Kelly Preece, it now means that only 20 per cent of her time is travel. “That extra time I’ve got back has come from the support that Sue provides and has allowed me to manage FCm from a procurement role.”

STEP 5: Sue Reeves is leaving FCm but the level of service is being maintained with Sue’s successor, Joanne Brown who began on the account last month. “Expectations change so we have to keep going back and continually re-align,” says FCm's Cousins. “It’s healthy to have a change of account manager as it makes us more proactive and allows us to step up our game. All clients have a different expectation of account management and since the recession we’re delivering a higher level of consultancy management,” says Cousins. “It’s extremely important to have an account manager who understands where we’re trying to get to,” says Preece. “If you don’t have the right account manager in place it will make or break a contract. I was introduced to my new account manager at the quarterly review meeting and she’s already picking up on improvements and areas to add further value.”

STEP 6: The story doesn’t end there as Preece says the re-engineering of her role was part of a much larger scheme. “I’m always looking at the next step; it’s all about continuous improvement.” she says. Part of that is to further improve online adoption, which is currently at between 38-44 per cent, and review whether AEGON has the right self-booking tool in place. Also on the agenda is to make the expense side of travel more transparent so Preece can more readily see the total trip cost. “I want to make the processes leaner and slicker,” says Preece. “It’s never going to be a one-size-fits-all approach but it could be easier for those travellers who manage their own diaries to utilise the online tool to book travel themselves. “My customers are internal and for me it’s about the customer service the traveller receives. I want their experience to continually improve,” says Preece. This next stage will begin in 2011 and be trialled with a group of AEGON's core travellers. For the time being, however, Preece is delighted with the new set-up. “I look at FCm as an outsourced travel manager. What they do operationally, I take it as a given. It’s their knowledge and experience in the travel industry that they bring to the table. This is where the value has been added. I wanted to make my role redundant and that’s what they’ve done. It’s brilliant.”

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