INSIGHTS

Danni's account management journey in mining and resources travel

After 18 years in the industry, Danni, Global Account Manager, FCM Travel, has carved out a niche supporting resource and mining clients. Based in Perth, she works closely to deliver market-leading corporate travel programs for businesses whose travellers are constantly on the move locally, nationally and globally.

I’ve loved my career journey to date. The travel and hospitality industry is unique, and I’ve been fortunate enough to have worked within hotels, event management and travel, always connected to the oil and gas and mining industries.

Great travel programs start with great conversations

While corporate travel tech and tools are important, Danni is more passionate about the relationship and “old school” communication. She knows her clients and their goals. By understanding what success looks like to her clients, it allows her to prioritise, spot risks early, solve problems, and keep things moving.

Sometimes it’s just about asking the right questions. Questioning and challenging the “normal”. Some clients need more guidance than others. By providing them with confidence and direction, or just making something happen, is the secret sauce we have to find in our roles as account managers.

Turning pain points into program wins

Mining and resource travel can be quite strict. Arrangers often can’t book until the approval comes through, and when that approval is delayed or unclear, it leads to missed rates and stressed-out teams. Danni helped untangle this issue for one of her clients, smoothing over the process and aligning travel bookings with internal workflows. Danni explains.

They had this manual process with layers of safety checkpoints and paper trails of documentation. It was costing them time and money. So, we worked with our expert team to customise our pre-trip approvals solution to suit their approvals flow.
Instead of the approver now waiting for three to four separate approvals, with multiple attachments in each email, an approver now receives one email directly from FCM Platform, with all the required documents housed in that one email. The traveller can also choose flights from this one email per policy, too. Making it much quicker for everyone involved.

A career highlight, welcoming Perenti

When mining company, Perenti consolidated its corporate travel program, Danni was at the centre. With 23 entities across four travel management companies (TMCs), it was complex, but also a huge opportunity for everyone.

Moving from four TMCs to one gave them visibility, consistency, and incredible buying power. Going live with this implementation was a massive moment for everyone involved. Working across the complexities of each entity, the unique requirements and operational needs were challenging but so rewarding. It was such a pleasure to be part of the journey and a real career highlight for me in this role.

Saving half a million in change fees

For another client, small behaviours were adding up to big losses. After spotting a trend in their reporting, Danni realised they were losing hundreds of thousands each quarter in change fees, all due to a lack of policy compliance and visibility.

They were losing nearly half a million dollars a year just from change behaviour. I worked with them to understand why, to challenge and introduce internal approvals for change requests, which resulted in huge cost savings. Companies need to find ways to save money, and we need to get creative on how we can help them achieve this.

What makes mining travel so different? Everything.

Mining and resource corporate travel is live and 24/7, it’s high-volume and often dictated by shifting site rosters, urgent crew changes, and weather events.

Building trust, transparency, and open communication throughout all areas of a client's business is absolutely critical. Especially for the sector I work with. The vast numbers of people moving and the flow-on effect if something doesn't go to plan is so disruptive.
These travellers aren’t flying for fun. If something’s delayed or missed, it impacts whole ground crews and operations. The team and I need to be flexible, fast, and understand how the business runs so we can keep pace.

And when change is needed, like rolling out new processes and tech, it can’t just happen overnight.

With this nature of travel, change is tricky. You can’t just halt travel to implement something new. So navigating change, getting everyone on the same page, and making departments work together to solve one problem statement is so important – but when it works, the sense of achievement between client and our FCM team is amazing.
Each day in my role is different. I thrive in the fast-paced environment and work together with our operations team to deliver success for our customers every day.