Travel programme consolidation: How FCM brings efficiency and visibility
A fragmented corporate travel management programme spread across multiple locations comes with a set of challenges. Many organisations, especially the multinational companies (MNCs) struggle with efficiency, productivity and visibility. Travel managers and decision makers, over the years, have approached FCM to solve simple to complex issues, unify business travel programmes, and get back control for efficient travel management.
Challenges in fragmented business travel programmes
MNCs with operations spanning Asia, Africa, the Americas, Europe, and the Middle East have several issues while working with different travel management companies, vendors, and suppliers in each market. Their key issues include:
• Inconsistent service levels
• Higher-than-expected costs
• Low visibility into travel spend and reporting
• Poor policy compliance and tracking
"Absence of a unified travel programme has a direct impact on traveller experience, productivity, and the bottom line. Companies struggle to track policy compliance, benefit from negotiated rates and pricing issues," said Naomi Dias, Director - Sales, FCM Travel India
Managing complexity - Enter FCM Travel
To drive standardisation, consistency, compliance, visibility and a whole roster of efficiencies in business travel, you need experts who can tackle unique challenges and solve pain points while embodying the spirit of partnership. In the same breath, you also require strong alignment from the senior management, honest conversations and unwavering support from the company.
FCM has been assisting many businesses in consolidating business travel programmes. Whether it is Japan Tobacco International (JTI) or a global risk consultancy company, FCM takes a phased approach to ensure smooth transition and improvement. Our experts have countered complex situations and helped many organizations with one unified business travel programme, which globally consistent with local nuances.
Here are the key initiatives we take for our customers and partners and why FCM can be your partner in consolidation:
Strategic account management
Our expert account managers understand your business travel policies across regions, understand the roadblocks, and get to the nitty-gritty of the pain points. Our change management tactics and strategic account management helps you with multidimensional visibility into financial and booking data including travel costs, identifying loopholes, and missed opportunities.
Global consistency, local nuances
FCM has strong Asia presence with regional offices in major locations including India, Japan, China, Singapore and Malaysia. Globally, we are present in over 95 countries. With strong regional and global presence, we bring best global practices with local nuances to the corporate travel programmes. We leverage our global supplier network, regional and local support teams and guidance from regional leaders to flesh out travel policies that incorporate laws of the land, buying patterns, and much more. For instance, a travel policy can be created with different capping for flight/hotel booking, different OBTs for every region.
Tech-backed solutions and experience
FCM has created its own proprietary FCM Platform from scratch. It is built after understanding now and future challenges of business travel industry. On FCM Platform, travel managers, bookers and business travellers can:
- Book flight, hotels, trains/cars, get rich and relevant content, and check policy compliance.
- It is the best tool for consolidating travel programmes as you can enter FCM Platform with one single login from anywhere, anytime.
- You can configure OBT of your choice and approve requests coming from different OBTs.
- The platform works on desktop and mobile, which gives you the flexibility to book and approve requests on the go- even on WhatsApp.
- With Power BI, data and reporting becomes a breeze giving visibility into travel spend and cost-saving opportunities.
Streamlined service and operations
At FCM, we use a personalised service model of local teams and hubs. We support your travellers keeping the human connection. You can always get in touch with our travel experts to solve simple to complex issues. Think local knowledge; on-the-ground support from dedicated travel managers; and after-hours assistance wherever you find yourself in the world.