The Business Travel Magazine Feb/Mar 2019

ARRIVALS
THE KNOWLEDGE
How to...
Rejuvenate your travel programme
The RSA insurance group changed TMCs
in a bid to improve processes and ease
the procurement department’s workload.
Find out how they went about it
THE BACKGROUND
RSA’s incumbent TMC had
been in place for eight years
but the company felt the
service and technology it
supplied was falling short
of expectations. RSA
launched a competitive
tender for its UK, Ireland
and Group Corporate
Centre (GCC) travel
management programme and ultimately
appointed FCM in January 2018. RSA has
around 12,600 employees and operates in
over 100 countries.
THE GOALS
RSA wanted to improve its travel
programme in several ways, including
having a greater focus on personal service
and more of a partnership approach with
its TMC. It also wanted to deploy futureproof
technology – including an online
booking too – as well as introducing an
approvals process, automated traveller
tracking and, finally, to lighten the workload
of its stretched procurement department.
“We needed more support from our
TMC in terms of taking
over some of the
business travel tasks
and responsibilities
that had been handled
by procurement,”
says Sarah Morrison,
RSA's Procurement
Category Manager.
THE SOLUTION
RSA was allocated six FCM
consultants to look after its
travel needs, plus a VIP
consultant to work with a
number of its executive
assistants. The FCM team
also handles any general queries from
bookers or travellers, considerably
lightening procurement’s workload.
RSA also implemented FCM’s Seeqa
booking tool – for which PAs and EAs were
invited to attend training roadshows –
which incorporated a new approvals
process based on rate caps for hotels and
flights in accordance
with RSA travel policy.
“The roadshows
gave travellers
and bookers the
opportunity to flag
up any changes
they felt were
needed within
Seeqa and we were
able to respond quickly
and ask our IT people to
make those changes,”
says Hayley France,
FCM Account Manager.
“There are always a few
teething problems when
implementing an OBT,
but despite some initial
challenges, Seeqa is proving
to be a great online tool for
RSA and adoption rates are
excellent,” she adds.
France acted almost as
‘implant’ account manager,
providing greater internal
support and communication,
assuming responsibility for
RSA’s intranet travel pages and overseeing
all internal travel communications. She has
an RSA email address and travels the
country visiting RSA’s offices.
“At the end of the day we are not travel
experts, so having Hayley and the support
of the offline FCM team – who have access
to our systems – made a big difference,”
says RSA’s Sarah Morrison.
THE RESULTS
By October last year online
adoption had reached 82%
for hotels and 61% for air
while the approvals process
resulted in a more streamlined
and efficient set up.
Traveller satisfaction has also risen
following improved service levels and
traveller tracking has been vastly improved
with greater visibility.
“We are very happy with the level of
engagement and service that FCM is
providing,” says RSA’s Sarah Morrison.
“They did an excellent job of training
our staff to use the online booking
tool,” she continues, “and the
introduction of FCM’s HUB portal as
our own travel portal means that
everything is integrated in one
place include rail, car hire and
other services.
“We can also make better
business decisions as a
result of the proactive
provision of data and MI
available to us via HUB.”
THEBUSINESSTRAVELMAG.COM
13