Case Study
Strategic change for a multinational advertising company
Key Highlights
Background
FCM started working with one of the world’s leading advertising and public relations company, headquartered in London. The client’s travel was initially bifurcated between 2 TMCs.
Challenges
With a diverse travel requirement, the organisation’s employees had the flexibility to book their Air travel from any of the two TMCs and hotels could be booked directly. Every company segment had their own local suppliers with whom they could book cars. Some of the key challenges that the organisation faced were:
- Non-compliant bookings
- Inefficient Duty of Care
- No visibility on travel spends
- No negotiating strength with suppliers
Strategy
In 2017, the organisation decided to consolidate their travel program to a single TMC, which was FCM. FCM proposed changes that could improve their booking efficiencies and generate savings on transaction fees:
- An online booking tool was designed which was completely customizable as per the company requirements. FCM implemented 56 online booking tools with different approval mechanisms that suited respective segments and standardized the organisation’s travel policy. The tool was designed in such a way that it would easily fit in with the change in management that they wanted to implement.
- In 2018, FCM started off with an adoption ratio of about 8-10% of the online booking tool. Employees from different segments were initially very resistant to use the online booking tool. FCM ran marketing campaigns for the group companies to increase adoption rate.
- Monthly dashboard reports were sent to the CFO which displayed an analysis of the travellers’ travel spend (ATP’s), buying behavior, travel program recommendation while also benchmarks the hotel program. It showed changes observed with the implementation of the booking tool. These reports were customized and started getting published on monthly basis.
- In 2018, the client also consolidated their car program but gave employees the flexibility to use any 3 suppliers. One of them was FCM and their car program offered the various solutions and services.
Result
The client mandated the usage of preferred hotels on the online booking tool. The objective was to improve the hotel program compliance and encourage travellers to book through a TMC. Within one year, the organisation achieved major travel program success which included the following:
- Compliance and 70% online booking tool adoption
- Consolidated reporting and CFO dashboards
- Improved risk management – well informed about locations, etc.
- Consolidating of hotel bookings enabling to a better negotiating deal
- 5% savings on ATP’s despite the airline situation in India
- 26% savings on TMC fees
- 4% Savings on consolidating their hotel spends