CASE STUDY
OTR: Full Department Outsourcing
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The Client
Industry: Telecommunications
Countries consolidated with FCM: 12
2019 Travel Spend: $30.2M
2021 Travel Spend (annualized): $9.7M
Challenge
The pandemic created business conditions that required a global telecommunications firm to downsize staff. Travel virtually ceased, and the company’s Travel Manager was let go. One year later, the company’s travel began to slowly increase, although it remained way below pre-pandemic levels.
Company executives understood that business travel had changed. Duty of Care and Sustainability efforts introduced new requirements and policies. The company’s travel volume and patterns were significantly different, requiring a full review of all supplier programmes. Travellers and travel arrangers needed to be retrained before hitting the road again. In short, much work had to be done with limited resources.
With travel still at low levels, the company is reticent to hire a full-time internal travel manager, even though the need was clear. Instead, they turned to FCM Consulting for Outsourced Travel Resources (OTR).
Solution
FCM Consulting, having listened to the specific needs and expectations of the client, implemented an OTR solution based on a Team of Experts approach, with pricing designed as a percentage of the company’s travel volume.
With the Team of Experts in place, each task of travel management — from strategy to policy redesign, supplier management to traveller training and outreach — was handled by the team member with the most expertise in that area. This generated better results faster than an internal generalist could provide.
Results
Implementing an OTR Full Department solution provided the company with clear benefits.
First, the cost of the programme was a fraction of what the company would have needed to invest in a full-time internal resource, and better aligned with the company’s actual travel activity.
Next, within the first three months of engaging OTR, the company’s air contracts had been restructured, the travel policy rewritten with Duty of Care front and center, a traveller/arranger communications and retraining programme launched, and company budgets set for 2022 assisted by our experts’ industry forecasting and peer company benchmarking.
As travel continues to grow for the company, the OTR effort will flex with it, ensuring that the company continues to reap benefits from our Team of Experts, while never overpaying for travel management and never being under-resourced.
As a result of Covid-19 our travel department was eliminated - but the need for day-to-day management and industry expertise were not. FCM Consulting has filled that gap for us, and we couldn’t be happier with the path forward and partnership in continuing to offer our travelers safe, sustainable and cost-efficient options as they get back on the road.
Director, Global Indirect Procurement, Telecommunications Industry