Get smart and strategic with fragmentation in corporate travel
Like many things in travel, there’s a complicated term to describe everything, even something that happens every day like content fragmentation.
What is fragmentation? It’s when staff try to book travel within their travel policy but are forced to access different sites to a source that travel other than the company’s preferred procurement channels and processes.
Why is it a problem? Because even though the traveller is booking within policy, procurement and travel managers have little oversight over these types of travel purchases and any efficiencies they have spent time implementing to ensure full oversight over their travel spend are undermined. Our recent survey, in conjunction with the African Business Travel Association (ABTA) highlighted that most travel managers believe effective visibility of data to be very or extremely important in their role.
Is fragmentation going away? Unfortunately not as airlines, for example, look to introduce ancillaries and GDS booking surcharges. Content fragmentation is very much here to stay and travel managers will have to see it as a day-to-day challenge that will need to be managed in future. What’s more, it’s likely to add costs to your travel programme through inefficiencies, reduced productivity and new technological investments that will need to be made as a result.
To manage fragmentation in future, corporates need to improve the visibility over their travel programme, says Euan McNeil, FCM Travel Solutions General Manager. “For one, corporates should turn to their suppliers and encourage them to make their full content and services available through the tools or platforms they advise their travellers to book through.
“If travel bookers and travellers are forced to work off multiple platforms to find and book their travel, it’s just another hurdle to ensuring that they comply with a travel policy. If it’s not possible to integrate all content, the corporate will need to decide whether the value that supplier brings supersedes the negative impact of non-integration.”
With fragmentation comes a great deal of manual intervention and time. The consequences on productivity are also clear. Your staff will be spending the time they could be spending on strategic tasks, on tasks that would have been simple through an online booking tool had all the content being at their disposal.
This is where your TMC partnership is critical. If you are struggling with content fragmentation and policy compliance, your FCM Key Account Manager can share more insights into a range of integrated technology tools on offer through the FCM Connect platform. These tools can fulfil a specific need to avoid content fragmentation where possible.
It is important for travel managers to understand that no matter how sophisticated their travel programme, or how strictly it is enforced, there will always be a certain among of fragmentation. This is why it is essential for corporates to work together with their TMC to improve transparency and have a finger on the pulse on where likely sources of fragmentation could arise so that they can make the right business decisions.