Getting With the Program - Carlson Wagonlit Travel

48 Smart Solution: Program ComplianceGetting full support on a local level was also challenging because of our corporateculture. Henkel grew from many acquisitions, which have sometimes led to differentinterpretations of corporate guidelines. When we wanted to replace local travelmanagement companies with one provider (CWT), people started to argue. It is verydifficult to make the organization understand that having local providers may providesome advantages but, for the most part, handicaps overall efficiency and limits savingsopportunities. Our global procurement network is very supportive but in the widercorporate culture, we still have a lot of national hurdles to overcome.CWT Vision: What about the keys to success?Birgit Schenscher: Transparency, transparency! A strong analysis of cost drivers andbooking behavior is the baseline for everything. You need to break this down intosimple, trackable measurements and show people the opportunities. This has beenvery important for convincing the countries.You also need to report on results and show progress, like the fact that just one monthafter communicating travel policy, we achieved lower fares. In addition to average ticketprice, which is very convincing, we track online booking compliance rates and severalother key performance indicators monthly. This confirms we have made the rightchanges and enables us to fine-tune if necessary.In addition, dialogue with local experts in each country, both from Henkel and fromCWT, has played a key role. You need well-trained people in each country, as well aspurchasers with the right arguments, to challenge the local markets. You also need aglobal travel management company that is ready to align itself with local conditions—the travel market is global but there are still local differences.CWT Vision: What are your next priorities?Birgit Schenscher: We are pushing advance booking again via “one-year-later”communications. We’re thanking the entire Henkel travel community for helping usachieve our targets and we’re reminding them that we can still improve.Our second priority is to further improve the hotel program. Prices are increasingtremendously, so this is an important challenge. We are intending to push onlinebooking for hotels, as we have done with air, using the visual guilt factor. We also wantto improve the way hotels are displayed on the online booking tool so that we steerpeople toward our preferred properties.In addition, we will be keeping an eye on our performance compared to peers. CWThas created an index of average fares paid by clients on our main city pairs and this hasbeen a useful benchmark. In 2006, our average ticket price in countries such asGermany or France was higher than the index, so it was clear we needed to make somechanges. Now it is slightly lower than the average.Finally, we will be aiming to keep one step ahead of market developments. Again, wehave to recognize that even if all markets are alike in the main trends, local carriers andconditions can be very different. CWT provides us with the diagnostics and we usethem to target specific action.