When it comes to travel risk management, no one solution fits every situation. Choose wisely
Effectively managing the risks that go along with corporate travel means constantly assessing both your company’s duty of care requirements as well as volatile global situations. As we discover in this month’s feature, Plan to Be Prepared (page 30), the task of identifying and deploying the right travel risk strategy requires thoughtful planning and insight.
BTE Think Tank members David Smith, Travel and Relocation Manager, Americas for Amdocs GO and Kevin McDonald, Senior Director for Strategic Procurement at PPD, found risk management solutions that were very different. But both were based on careful evaluation of each company’s specific needs.
POINTDavid: It’s hard to believe it’s been seven years since the eruptions of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull volcano. I remember the travel disruption caused by the ash cloud; we had many travelers stranded after an important event held in Europe. While this did not pose any real safety concerns, our travel team was scrambling to locate and communicate with affected travelers.
While I was trying to sort through a number of TMC and internally generated reports to find our employees, I remember thinking, “Wow! I’m glad this isn’t some kind of true emergency or disaster.”
With employees traveling to see customers and to other office locations in over 85 countries, we sorely needed better tools to locate and assist travelers in case of emergency. We looked to the tools offered by our TMCs but we needed a global solution that wasn’t based on a single TMC’s capability.
We also had to evaluate the amount of leakage outside our travel program to be sure the investment in a large scale risk management tool would be worth it. As we have a very low amount of leakage we were confident that we could capture over 90 percent of all business travelers at any given time.
After getting all stakeholders involved we settled on one of the large risk management tools. The global implementation went smoothly region by region, although some of our profile information and how we collect/populate it needed to be adjusted and updated.
Communicating with groups of employees in an affected area is now much easier and more accurate. Traveler tracking has become 100 percent better for our needs and we even find other uses for these tools and data. For example, we use the information to anticipate the amount of traffic and desk space needed in our larger offices for visitors arriving from other locations. We can also can identify trends in the hotels selected by our travelers in frequently traveled areas.
I certainly understand that is may not be the solution for every corporation depending on size, destinations, leakage, cost, etc. But in our case a large global tool was the best solution.
COUNTERPOINTKevin: As pointed out above, risk management solutions are by nature very company specific. Until recently, we utilized International SOS for traveler tracking, advisories and insurance against evacuations. However upon evaluation, we realized that we already maintained insurance policies through AIG and other carriers that actually provided the same benefits, with the exception of traveler tracking. So we were, in effect, double covered.
We also found that our utilization of iSOS’ services over the past three years had been restricted to advisory services only. Because we operate as a CTD, we can manage traveler tracking for 95 percent of our travelers internally. Travel advisories are obtained from country-specific state departments depending where the traveler is based.
This review of our program allowed us to maintain the same level of services, from the traveler’s perspective, while reducing a significant third-party expense. In our case, it made more sense to manage our travel risk by relying on alternative providers and internal resources rather than using a large global tool.