Case Study
Why one size doesn't fit all in travel management programmes
With millions of dollars invested in business travel each year, and more than 20,000 travellers, this organisation needed a travel programme capable of supporting the unique needs of multiple business functions. During implementation, it quickly became clear that a standard approval workflow wouldn’t work. The organisation needed a more tailored approach that reflected its complex operating structure, different traveller groups, and changing approval lines.
Rather than asking the customer to compromise, their FCM account manager became their biggest advocate, bringing together onboarding, product, technology, and operations teams to challenge conventional thinking and design a corporate travel programme around the customer's requirements
Key takeaways
- Tailored traveller experiences were designed around three distinct groups.
- More than 80 discovery sessions, workshops, and planning meetings took place before a solution was locked in.
- Over 95 hours of role-specific training was delivered, supported by tailored user guides and video tutorials.
- A custom-built technology solution links cost-centre and approver data across thousands of records, keeping approval workflows current with a simple file upload.
- Online adoption increased from 0% to 80%, including traveller groups that had previously relied on offline booking methods.
The challenges
Every part of this organisation travels differently. With different travel purposes, booking behaviours, and approval requirements. Squeezing them all into one standard process would have created unnecessary friction, frustrated travellers, and slowed adoption before the programme had even got off the ground.
At the same time, the customer's governance model introduced another layer of complexity. Travel approvals needed to be managed across more than 50,000 approver lines and 9,000 cost centres, with approvers changing as the organisation ex
perienced workforce movements. That meant the approval structure couldn’t simply be set up, turned on, and left alone.
Without a different approach, the team would have relied on a never-ending cycle of manual updates, creating unnecessary admin, compliance risk, and plenty of back and forth for everyone involved. For travellers, outdated approval information could mean unnecessary delays or the wrong approval pathway.
The solutions
After leading more than 80 implementation discovery sessions, workshops, and planning meetings to fully understand how the organisation operated, two solutions were delivered in just nine weeks.
Tailored traveller experiences
FCM’s account manager created three tailored travel experiences aligned to each traveller group.
- Internal staff travel between offices
- External non-employee travel
- Educational travel including conferences and training
Booking workflows, approvals, communications, support models, and training were customised to reflect the different ways each group travelled. To help everyone hit the ground running, the FCM team delivered more than 95+ hours of role-specific training, backed by tailored user guides and video tutorials, ensuring users only received information relevant to their group and how they travelled.
Custom approval process
Rather than accept current tech limitations and push ahead with onboarding, the FCM account manager brought together FCM's product, technology, and onboarding teams, alongside our online booking tool partner, to champion a better way. Demonstrating why a custom solution was essential to building a programme that reflected how the organisation operated.
The result was a custom technology solution that links approver data and cost-centres with little admin required. The customer supplies a single file of their latest approver and cost-centre data, FCM uploads it to the custom-built solution, and that data flows through to the online booking tool. In just a few steps, thousands of approval records are refreshed and aligned, removing many layers of manual reconciliation this scale of complexity would normally demand.
For the customer, approval workflows stay current as the organisation changes. Compliance risk drops because approver data doesn't drift out of date. And the burden of keeping thousands of records accurate no longer falls on internal teams, freeing the customer to focus on running their travel programme rather than maintaining it.
The outcomes
FCM’s robust implementation process, with experts from all areas ensuring an optimal design for the customer’s needs (project lead, key account manager as the customers advocate, technical implementation manager, and operations leader) meant the organisation was fully understood before any solution was designed. Resulting in a programme built around the customer's people, processes, and governance from day one.
The results include:
- Early online adoption sitting at 80%, including traveller groups with no prior online booking experience, improving month on month
- 4.17 CSAT measuring traveller and arranger satisfaction, thanks to purpose-built system which fits the end users needs
- Three bespoke traveller experiences designed around different business needs
- Thousands of cost-centre and approval records managed through a custom-built solution
- More accurate approval workflows, helping ensure travellers are directed to the right approvers
- Reduced support queries through role-specific training and communications
- Greater governance and oversight through a more consistent approach to approval data
Trust and loyalty aren't created through isolated transactions. They're built through consistent, meaningful interactions and by continuously advocating for customer needs. When customers feel supported, understood, and valued, long-term partnerships naturally follow. - Ashleigh Jarvis Branks, Account Manager, FCM Travel