CASE STUDY

Global charity has travelled safely with FCM Australia for over a decade

For over ten years, FCM Australia has nurtured a partnership with a global charity that helps millions of children in need each year. During this time, the partnership has evolved to suit the changing needs of the charity’s organisational and traveller needs.

Background and challenges

The charity undertakes vital work worldwide, and having access to flexible, reliable, and cost-effective travel management is essential to its overall mission and success of the charity. To support this, the charity leverages its membership with Procurement Australia to access exclusive discounts and benefits, thanks to the supplier partnership between FCM and Procurement Australia.

Since 2019, FCM has worked with the charity to:

Create greater travel programme efficiencies
Reduce costs to support the mission
Enhance customer service levels and traveller experience
Achieve a more sustainable travel programme now and into the future
With the help of FCM, this client always travels safely and cost-efficiently.

With the help of FCM, this client always travels safely and cost-efficiently.

Solutions to better travel management

Streamlining the accounting processes

A significant focus and achievement for this client has been improving the travel booking process for better visibility of travel approvals and reporting. The work has also streamlined the reconciliation process for the charity’s finance team.

Through numerous workshops with the internal team, we identified multiple pain points in the accounting process and worked together to implement solutions, including:

Updated traveller profile information and data collection
Redesigned the charity’s cost centre structure
Introduced custom fields in FCM’s online booking tool to assist invoicing data
Removed travel purchase orders
Increased monthly reporting for each cost centre owner
Reviewed current payment solutions

These changes have not only simplified reconciliation processes but also significantly boosted productivity for the charity’s finance teams.

Enhancing customer service with a new travel team

Since coming on board, the global charity’s travel needs have grown and evolved. While the organisation has always enjoyed excellent service levels from FCM, the complexity and volume of their travel and client satisfaction levels required a different approach to servicing.

In recent years, FCM introduced a new operational team. This team includes three FCM travel managers with backgrounds in managing travel for not-for-profit organisations and group trips. This new approach has improved service levels for travellers with faster turnaround times and more personalised service.

Travel relocations from high-risk destinations

Our charity client works with communities and families nationwide, often requiring urgent travel and logistics support. For example, staff based in Townsville, Queensland, manage travel relocations from the Gulf of Carpentaria, including moving people from Doomadgee, Mornington Island, and Normanton to other rural areas or city hubs such as Cairns, Mount Isa, and Charters Towers.

These last-minute, urgent requests involve locations with limited accommodation and transport options. Adding to the complexity, only one airline services these Gulf locations with a single flight a day, making careful planning and coordination essential. Every few months, FCM assists the charities Queensland-based team with relocating clients from high-risk environments.