Travelling Smarter 101 - American Express Global Business Travel

Best Travel Programme
UGL Limited engineers a big win with a global
consolidated travel approach
Situation
UGL Limited is a company on the move. Having recently acquired corporate real
estate services firm DTZ, the company spanned more than 30 markets and had
more than 6,000 travellers globally spending $40 million 1 AUD each year. A global
leader in outsourced engineering, property services, asset management and
project management, UGL Limited wanted to reduce the cost of travel without
cutting down on the number of trips or compromising service quality.
Their challenge With the DTZ acquisition, the company now had multiple travel
policies, programmes and suppliers, making it difficult to really get a handle on
spend and provide duty of care to their travellers. They needed to consolidate.
That meant finding one supplier who could build a global programme, get it up
and running by changing booking behaviours, and have the capacity to cover
travellers worldwide.
“Our key intention is to reduce
the cost of travel – not activity
– as travel is an integral part
to our business.”
-Premah Krishnan,
Category manager
UGL Limited
Solution
UGL’s first step was selecting a travel provider. Their partner, American Express
Global Business Travel, who had been delivering exceptional results for the past
five years, seemed like a good place to start.
The American Express Global Business Travel team had deep insight at hand,
from their proven track record at implementing global programmes, supporting
change management to drive compliance and providing customised dashboards
to aid executive decisions – their knowledge gave them the edge. And that wasn’t
all the team could offer. The service dependability of American Express Global
Business Travel across 140 countries, for more than 160 years, provided
consistency across both traveller security and support, exactly what UGL was
looking for. American Express Global Business Travel made the cut.
Travel services provided by American Express International, Inc. (ABN 15 000 618 208 AFSL No. 237996). Incorporated with limited liability in Delaware, USA.
® Registered trademark of American Express Company. Licensed Travel Agent, 12 Shelley Street, Sydney NSW 2000. License No. NSW 2TA000113,
ACT 18800682, QLD 3497079, VIC TA-30233, WA 9TA81, SA TTA 241458, TAS TAS064.
© 2012 American Express Company. All rights reserved. Source 1: AXIS@WORK 2013, American Express International inc.
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At American Express Global Business Travel, we bring together international
reach with local presence. Local buy-in was important to the success of the
consolidated programme, so the UGL and American Express Global Business
Travel teams conducted site visits and teleconferences to really get to know the
travel profiles of UGL’s local offices.
The implementation was then handled on a market-by-market basis, allowing the
teams to focus on the details that mattered locally. This included weekly meetings
throughout the transition with key players and travel arranger sessions, which
really started to change booking behaviours - such as increasing usage of
preferred hotel suppliers. This change would deliver significant savings, by
making the most of the highly competitive rates UGL and American Express
Global Business Travel had to offer.
Once the integrated programme was up and running, UGL continued to utilise the
American Express Global Business Travel reporting tool, AXIS@WORK, which
hosted a wealth of data. The power of this data was used to drive compliance to
the new policy– for example, by communicating to travel arrangers where
advance purchase opportunities had been missed.
“By working together and
successfully implementing an
optimisation and integration
strategy – UGL limited now
has a global consolidated
programme that’s exceeding
our agreed partnership
objectives”
-Annie Dal Pozzo,
Global Client Manager,
American Express Global
Business Travel
Outcome
The biggest triumph for UGL was the global consolidation of their travel spend.
The proficiency of the American Express Global Business Travel team meant that
a winning integration and optimisation strategy delivered a consistent programme
across 30 countries. With a slick change management plan in place, people were
using it. Travellers now know who to contact 24/7, globally. Duty of care was in
place. And UGL’s new global programme has netted impressive results; first-year
savings totalled $800,000 AUD – that’s 2 percent of their total travel spend 1 .
To top it all off, the UGL team’s successful work was acknowledged when they
won “Best Travel Programme of the year” in the 2013 BTTB Travel Management
awards, an annual recognition programme with an independent panel of judges.
Looking to the future, UGL and American Express will continue in their quest to
push the boundaries of their travel programme, moving UGL’s business objectives forward.
Travel services provided by American Express International, Inc. (ABN 15 000 618 208 AFSL No. 237996). Incorporated with limited liability in Delaware, USA.
® Registered trademark of American Express Company. Licensed Travel Agent, 12 Shelley Street, Sydney NSW 2000. License No. NSW 2TA000113,
ACT 18800682, QLD 3497079, VIC TA-30233, WA 9TA81, SA TTA 241458, TAS TAS064.
© 2012 American Express Company. All rights reserved. Source 1: AXIS@WORK 2013, American Express International inc.
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