It is safe to say that the world of travel management has a lot of moving parts. Although in many companies travel and entertainment spend represents the second highest spend next to payroll, corporations usually only have a single person who is constantly navigating the waters of travel management.
Over the past several years, the travel manager role has slowly diminished – only very large companies will have a dedicated travel manager whereas many companies have someone in finance or HR who cover travel while performing other job duties. Unfortunately, running a successful, efficient travel program takes hours of work, buy-in from senior management and a lot of assistance.
Travel management companies are necessary to a successful travel program. Although a TMC provides many services, the key person who will ultimately make or break the TMC partnership is the Strategic Account Manager.
The Strategic Account Manager is the point person at the travel management company who is really an extension of your travel team. This jack-of-all-trades is not only responsible for ensuring successful implementation, but brings years of travel experience with the knowledge of tools, processes and key relationships to ensure problems can identified and quickly corrected. Furthermore, this person can confirm supplier contracts are in place and working as intended, ensure reporting is provided or at your disposal, and act as an experienced consultant to save your company money.
Not all account managers are the same – many have a large number of accounts and are basically on-call to assist if a report is needed or a mistake has occurred. This setup may be fine for smaller companies with a modest travel spend. However this solution only maintains the status quo with no real chance of saving additional money or making processes more efficient. I feel strongly that, yes, an account manager should handle these issues, but also be a strategic partner, understanding your program and helping you get to the next step in compliance and cost savings.
A good Strategic Account Manager will review all your contracts, analyze your travel spend and make recommendations about whether the contract is a good fit and the terms are attainable, or whether simply to take a different path.
By looking at travel data, a Strategic Account Manager can easily spot the “low hanging fruit” like a poor record of advance purchase or sky-high average ticket prices in certain markets. The suggestions can lead to a game plan that targets issues and has an immediate impact on travel spend and compliance.
Account managers have the luxury of working with different accounts in the past and present, offering different experiences that may be useful to the travel manager who’s trying to think “outside the box” to overcome roadblocks to their goals. A different point of view or simply the knowledge that a potential solution may have been a waste of time can really be useful.
One of the simplest initiatives that separates the everyday account manager from a Strategic Account Manager is setting up a roadmap for the program. Many big initiatives are like stopping a train – it takes some time. However simply having a one- to three-year roadmap is great, not only to keep the train on track but to show senior management the potential savings and efficiencies.
The bottom line is this: A good Strategic Account Manager is imperative for the success of your travel program. It doesn’t matter if the travel manager has years of experience or is brand new to the role, the knowledge provided the newbie and the work taken off the plate of the seasoned travel veteran is equally invaluable.
A former CEO of mine once told me the health of a corporation can be easily checked by the state of the travel program – if travelers are not compliant and processes are inefficient, chances are these issues will be present in other areas of the business as well.
In short, partnering with a good TMC with a great Strategic Account Manager only makes good business sense.