5 signs your travel program requires consolidation

Imagine this: A multinational company (MNC) headquartered in Australia with offices across multiple regions. Each country has its own business travel policy, works with different travel management companies (TMCs) and suppliers, and has disjointed bookings and approvals system. Sounds complex and like a logistical nightmare, right? Well, it is.
With a globalised business environment with offices stretching across continents, it is crucial to have a strategy for business travel as well. It is a necessity as fragmented and unmanaged approach across regions can lead to a host of inefficiencies. That’s where consolidating of business travel programs saves the day.
Understanding travel program consolidation
Consolidation of travel programs means having a uniform travel policy and practices across all locations- even if the headquarters are in Australia or anywhere else. Whether you have offices in New Zealand, China, London, or New York—all locations have a unified travel program and have same guidelines for booking air, hotel, and car.
Consolidating promises uniformity, cost management, streamlined operations, and better business travel data and expense management.
However, it doesn’t mean one-size-fits-all. A uniform travel policy and program can have local nuances, tweaked as per region. With technology platforms like FCM Platform, you can also integrate local online booking tools. For instance, travel account managers while drafting a travel policy for China can add local suppliers, hire support who are in China and speak the language, and tweak the business travel policy as per regional preferences like more train journeys over flights.
Benefits of consolidation of business travel program
Global travel program consolidation is a productive approach that creates a winning strategy for business travel. Business travel consolidation brings consistency across regions, offers better and negotiated rates from preferred partners (air, hotel, car), enables cost control, drives policy compliance, provides enhanced visibility of travel spends, and risk management.
5 signs you need travel program consolidation
1. Booking with different TMCs/vendors in each location
If your company is managing business travel with different TMC/vendors across locations, an assessment will highlight discrepancies, little policy compliance, budget overshoots, no traveller support, poor visibility of expenses and. It is also time consuming as travel managers and bookers have to manage multiple vendors.
2. Poor visibility into travel spends across locations
Travel is considered as the second highest expense for many businesses, especially MNCs. It is important to know where you are spending and whether that spend is worth it or not. It is important to get clear visibility into travel budgets and spends from each region, But getting this level of data from each vendor/TMC/traveller can get exhausting and time consuming. In this view, partnering with one TMC with global presence like FCM can provide deep insights and even identify opportunities of maximise savings.
3. No unified data of business travellers
Who are your frequent flyers? How many employees travel every year? Are they booking economy or business class? What about their accommodation? If you don’t have answers to these questions, you have a fragmented and unmanaged travel program. With certain TMCs, you can store traveller data and information at a centralised platform, which can be accessed by travel managers from any location.
4. No negotiated rates
Negotiated rates from airlines and hotel partners can improve financials of your corporate travel programs. Travel managers keep looking for special rates from their preferred suppliers to reduce costs and provide best-in-class experience to business travellers, especially during bulk bookings. If you are booking with the same supplier without any negotiated rate, you are missing out on a big chance to control costs.
5. Duty of care, risk management is ignored
By leveraging TMC tech tools like FCM Platform, you can guide business travellers to make informed decisions, nudging them towards options that will help your travel program save travel costs. For instance, FCM Platform informs the traveller, at the time of booking, if the chosen options are out of policy. In addition, you can also track whether the business trip bookings in policy compliance, time taken to book after trip approval through Power BI.
Experts for global business travel consolidation, risk management
Managing travel programs across locations can be tricky and exhausting. Here’s where you should seek professional help and partner with TMCs like FCM, a global travel management company which has is present in over 95+ countries.
With FCM you can expect:
- Consistent travel programs across locations with a strong regional understanding. FCM Platform is built to make end-to-end business travel management seamless and productive.
- Reporting and insights through Power BI that highlights discrepancies, gives a comprehensive travel and expense report, and offers insights and strategy for long term forecasting.
- Duty of care as FCM mobile sends real-time notifications to manage risks and alerts travellers at the time of booking, in case of high-risk regions or untoward incidents.
- Flexibility to accommodate various regional requirements and online booking tools (OBTs) while maintaining a global standard.
- Change management initiatives and communication to ensure policy compliance.